ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS

TREASURY

The Chancellor of the Exchequer was asked—

Banks (Rescue Package)

Harry Cohen: How much the Government have committed to the banking rescue package; and what assessment he has made of the package's outcome to date.

Alistair Darling: The measures that I announced in October have stabilised the banking system, and inter-bank lending rates have fallen. The three-month LIBOR rate halved to just over 3 per cent. this week.

Harry Cohen: In the present circumstances, a Government who intervene are far better than one who would sit on their hands, and the Government have been right to rescue the banks, get funds to small businesses and bring forward capital spending. Will they now consider creating more public sector jobs, providing funding for partnerships between public authorities and businesses, and taking a public stakeholding in businesses that need it and have a viability beyond the current downturn?

Alistair Darling: I agree that it is important for public expenditure to support the economy at this stage. As my hon. Friend says, we have brought forward spending in relation to housing, transport and other matters, and we will continue to do whatever is necessary to support our economy. The difference between the Government and the Opposition is that we believe that Government have a role here. We are prepared to increase expenditure to support the economy, as I announced in the pre-Budget report, and we will continue to do that.

Michael Fallon: Given the deputy governor's warning yesterday and the evidence that credit is continuing to contract, will the Chancellor look again at the capital requirements applying to banks, and indeed the terms of his October rescue package for the Scottish banks, to ensure that spending really is getting through? Will he inject some urgency into this process to prevent hundreds of thousands of jobs from being lost unnecessarily?

Alistair Darling: The hon. Gentleman raises a very real issue relating to bank recapitalisation. In October, the Financial Services Authority, along with the Bank and ourselves, agreed that it was necessary to recapitalise the largest banks in the country. The FSA is considering that level of capitalisation, and, as part of the Basel process, it is also, along with others, considering the effect of the requirements of capitalisation in relation to the current economic circumstances—the procyclicality, as it is described. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that the issue needs to be looked at.
	As for the two banks in which we have shareholdings, the House will know that there is a requirement for them to maintain the availability of lending at 2007 levels. Since the announcement, RBS in particular has said it will ensure that it treats its small business customers far better than in the past, and that they will benefit from the interest rates being offered.
	There is a lot more to be done. The hon. Gentleman is right to speak of urgency, given the situation that we face at present. We—the Government, the FSA or the Bank—will continue to do what is necessary to help to ensure that sufficient lending comes into the economy, while at the same time ensuring that the banks are resilient enough for the future.

Mark Durkan: Is the Treasury tracking the behaviour of banks in Northern Ireland, including Ulster bank, a wholly owned subsidiary of the RBS, which is not offering business customers the standards, terms and rates offered by the RBS here? Can the Chancellor assure small businesses that they will not be caught in a vice between tax demanded and money unavailable for borrowing next month, which marks the beginning of a new VAT and PAYE quarter and the deadline for tax returns from those who are self-employed?

Alistair Darling: We monitor the lending of banks in every part of the United Kingdom. If the hon. Gentleman knows of specific instances in relation to the Ulster bank, I should be grateful if he would tell me about them. We have a lending panel that examines the concerns of small businesses, which is regularly chaired by my noble Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform.
	As for the problems relating to payment of tax, the hon. Gentleman will recall my announcement in the pre-Budget report that Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs was introducing a scheme that would give people time to pay not just VAT, but corporation tax and income tax—indeed, all taxes. That facility is now available, enabling people to pay their bills over an extended period, and I am glad to say that it is being well used. We are aware of the problems that would otherwise be caused to small businesses' cash flow.

Graham Brady: Does it remain the Chancellor's policy that it is better to use public resources to get the banks lending again than to use them to give direct support or subsidy to particular industries?

Alistair Darling: I do not favour what is sometimes termed a one-club approach. I think that it was right for us to use public money to recapitalise the banks where that was necessary—some of them had raised money privately—and we will continue to do that. As for direct lending, in the pre-Budget report I announced the provision of £1 billion to help small and medium-sized enterprises specifically. I also said that we would think about how we could implement the Crosby report and support mortgage lending.
	A variety of measures are needed, but they are all doing the same thing: they are all aimed at supporting different parts of the economy. I must tell the hon. Gentleman, however, that if we are to do any of these things, it is also necessary to be prepared actually to spend the money. Otherwise this will become merely an empty promise, like the promises being made by his Front-Bench colleagues.

Dennis Skinner: Does the Chancellor agree that one of the quickest ways to get people back into work is through the construction industry, and is he aware that a number of local authorities are ready, willing and able—and have got the land—to start building council houses again? Bolsover district council, for example, has made representations to replace some old bungalows and to build some more as well. Will he encourage these local authorities—Labour controlled—to get moving again?

Alistair Darling: I agree with my hon. Friend that it is important that the public sector supports the construction industry; if public money were not going into housing, and into schools, hospitals and other construction projects, the industry would be in a far worse position than it is in even now. That is why we have brought forward permission for local authorities and other public bodies to spend money. That is very important, and if councils are not doing that, people should ask them why not, because we have made it clear that we are prepared to allow spending to be brought forward in all parts of the country. We have also made it clear to the devolved Administrations that they, too, can bring forward their proposals, and we look forward to receiving them.

Tobias Ellwood: The Chancellor said he will do what is necessary to help the British economy, but it is now clear that we will have the worst recession of all the G7 countries. Does the Chancellor feel that it might be necessary to visit the IMF and ask for a financial bail-out?

Alistair Darling: Because of the sheer size of the financial services sector in this country and because the financial services sector is affected by a global recession right across the world, we are, of course, bound to be affected by that, but, as I said to the House at the time of the pre-Budget report, I am confident we will get through this. I have set out how I believe we can do that, and it involves the Government being prepared not just to borrow to support what are known as the automatic stabilisers—the rising benefit payments and so forth that we get in any downturn—but to do more than that by putting £20 billion more into the economy, as that is the right thing to do to support the economy and therefore to support jobs.

Vincent Cable: Following the revelation only this week that taxpayer-supported and guaranteed banks lost hundreds of millions of pounds in a pyramid selling scheme, I want to ask the Chancellor about curbing gambling activities. There is a certain amount of emotional appeal in the Conservative leader's proposal that bankers should be rounded up and put behind bars, but is not a more practical and immediately useful suggestion that the banks should be required to divest themselves of their high-risk investment banking operations and concentrate on mainstream lending to British households and firms currently being deprived of credit?

Alistair Darling: I agree with the hon. Gentleman that there are serious questions to be asked in the United States about the particular matter to which he refers, and I think I am right in saying that the chairman of the American Securities and Exchange Commission has indicated that there needs to be a thorough investigation there. However, I also think it is important that all banks—the boards of all companies, in fact—should know and understand the risks to which they might become exposed. The evidence of the last year is that far too many banks were not fully aware of those risks or did not make sufficient provision against those risks turning bad. The hon. Gentleman is right that we need to learn the lessons of what has happened in the past, which is why I said I wanted to bring forward proposals in the spring to look at aspects of our regulatory system, but that must also be done across the world. The G20 group of leaders and Finance Ministers discussed that at the meeting in Washington in November, and we will discuss it again when we reconvene in London in April.

Philip Hammond: Now that the Government have accepted the recommendation that we have been making for some time to reduce the cost of inter-bank guarantees offered by the Government, will the Chancellor also now accept our advice to reduce the cost of the preference share capital offered to the banks?

Alistair Darling: In relation to the cost of the scheme, I said when we made the announcement that we would keep all the terms and conditions under review. We were the first into the field. Since then, other countries have come up with schemes of their own, and it is right that we keep these matters under review. As I said in the House when asked about preference shares on Monday, we will look at that, but I want to make sure that we balance the need to ensure that the banks lend to the business community and individuals with the fact that the taxpayer must get a fair deal. The Conservative Front Bench raised that in October, and it is right to do so again now as that concern has not gone away.

Government Borrowing/Debt

David Evennett: What his most recent estimate is of the levels of Government borrowing and debt; and if he will make a statement.

Alistair Darling: The pre-Budget report set out the Government's projections for the level of Government borrowing and debt.

David Evennett: I note the Chancellor's comments. Given the responses that we have had from him, the future looks bleak indeed. Does he agree with the German Finance Minister's view that this Government's policies will saddle the country with debt
	"that will take a...generation to work off"?

Alistair Darling: No, I do not. I wish to say three things on that. First, Peer Steinbrück is an extremely charming man and I enjoy working with him very much. Secondly, I fully supported him when he introduced a fiscal stimulus into the German economy of about 1 per cent.—that is almost exactly the same as what we have done—some time ago. Thirdly, our debt levels are lower than Germany's.

Adrian Bailey: The business community in my constituency has emphasised to me that the Government's priority must be to have measures to sustain our manufacturing base, so as to maintain our tax base for the future. Can my right hon. Friend assure me that he will not listen to the scaremongering and siren voices from Opposition Members, and that he will ensure that support for business is maintained as the Government's priority during this economic downturn?

Alistair Darling: I agree with my hon. Friend that it is important that the Government support business. That can be done in a variety of ways, both indirectly and directly, as appropriate. Of course, we need to balance that with a need to ensure that we have proper regard to the public finances and the interests of the taxpayer. He is right to say that at a time such as this all the measures that the Government are examining are designed to help businesses get through what is undoubtedly a difficult period.

Mark Field: Despite the record levels of debt that the Chancellor is predicting for the next five years and beyond, he continues to assert that Britain is uniquely well placed to deal with this downturn. On what basis has he come to that conclusion?

Alistair Darling: The hon. Gentleman is right to say that our debt levels will rise over the next period. That is partly because it is inevitable in any downturn such as this that the Government's revenues will fall and the unemployment benefit payments that we have to make will rise. The operation of the automatic stabilisers, to which I have referred, is supported on both sides of the House—indeed, the Leader of the Opposition said that he supported it—and it accounts for the major increase in the Government's expenditure. As I said, it is also necessary for us to put more money into the economy. If we look ahead, we will see that during the next year we will have low interest rates and far lower inflation than in the past, and energy prices will continue to fall, which will help in relation to what people pay at the pump and must also affect the amount that people pay for gas and electricity. Of course, in addition, we reduced the amount of debt from the level that we inherited when we took office in 1997, and we will continue to do everything we can to support the economy.

Andrew Love: Is this not rich coming from the Conservatives, who, as my right hon. Friend has said, support the automatic stabilisers, which account for the vast majority of the increase in debt and borrowing, and who have two major recessions behind them? Is it not outrageous that, as the official Opposition, the Conservative party is the only one in this House that does not support—

Mr. Speaker: Order. The Chancellor has enough to do without worrying about what the policies of the other party are. I think that he can answer.

Alistair Darling: I agree with my hon. Friend. The difference is that whereas during this downturn we are prepared to take action to help people and businesses, that simply did not happen in the 1980s and 1990s, and the country paid a very heavy price.

Brooks Newmark: Can the Chancellor tell the House why UK debt is considered twice as risky as that of McDonald's?

Alistair Darling: As the hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well, the market for trading in Government debt is pretty thin and it really cannot be compared with the trading of Government debt in relation to companies.

Andy Reed: Although there is a great deal of risk in not doing anything, there is a certain amount of risk in what is taking place. Does my right hon. Friend agree that even a 1 per cent. financial stimulus in the economy may not be enough? Will he comment on the possibility of considering further financial stimulus in the new year because of the level of the global economic downturn and its effect in constituencies across this country?

Alistair Darling: The announcements that we made in the pre-Budget report were right. As my hon. Friend says, the risk of not doing anything was far outweighed by the advantages of taking action. In the current climate, there is no Government in the world who are not looking every day at what else they need to do, but while it is right to allow borrowing to rise now, we must ensure that we take the right action to ensure that borrowing falls and that we come back into current balance within a reasonable period. That is what I said in the pre-Budget report and that remains the Government's position.

Mark Hoban: The Chancellor plans to increase taxes by £40 billion to reduce Government borrowing, but will not the planned £5 billion tax hike on jobs hamper our recovery? Does he not realise how much damage this borrow now, pay later policy will cause?

Alistair Darling: Assuming that the hon. Gentleman agrees with his party's leader, he supports the decision to allow borrowing to rise through the operation of the automatic stabilisers, and that accounts for about £60 billion of the borrowing. I know that he does not agree that we should go further, but his approach is just plain wrong. We need to ensure that as the economy comes out of this period—as it recovers and starts to grow—we bring our borrowing back down. It is better that we should do that and I set out in the pre-Budget report a fair way of doing so.

Small Businesses

Brian Iddon: What assessment he has made of the likely effect on small businesses of the measures announced in the pre-Budget report.

Stephen Timms: The impact will be very strongly positive. The package addresses small businesses' cash-flow problems, their access to credit and management of their tax liability. The fiscal stimulus will be crucial in encouraging economic recovery.

Brian Iddon: My constituency has a fair number of large multi-storey former cotton mills, the basements and upper floors of which are difficult to let. How temporary will the 70 per cent. relief on non-domestic properties be, and how will it affect a business man who owns one of those mills, pays the business rates and then sub-lets to a multitude of other smaller businesses?

Stephen Timms: My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to the benefits of this measure. It is a temporary increase, to £15,000, for next year only—2009-10—in the threshold at which empty property becomes liable for business rates. As he says, some 70 per cent. of empty properties will pay no rates next year as a result. He asked about subdivided properties. Their position will depend on the nature of the division and whether the property constitutes a separate, self-contained hereditament for ratings purposes. A landlord who is concerned should check the liability with the Valuation Office Agency.

Julian Brazier: Does the Minister accept that for small businesses this is a relatively small package compared with the overwhelming effect of the unwillingness of many banks to lend to them? Does he also accept that the Government mis-structured their huge package in such a way that the banks have an incentive to pay it off as quickly as possible and to get their loan books down rather than up? It is that circumstance that is driving the recession more than anything else.

Stephen Timms: No, that is not the case at all and the PBR package directly addresses those concerns. That is why the chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses said:
	"This Pre-Budget Report is a sign of the importance of small businesses to the UK economy."
	It fully addresses their needs and that is why the package includes a £1 billion small business finance scheme, to encourage bank lending to small and medium enterprises, and an additional £1 billion facility to help smaller exporters. The range of measures is accurately targeted at the problems that small businesses are facing at the moment.

Frank Field: If the Government are to pump further taxpayers' money through the banking system, can my right hon. Friend give the House an undertaking that that will be limited to the nationalised banking sector and specifically tied to extending loans to small and medium businesses?

Stephen Timms: My right hon. Friend will know that conditions addressing exactly that point have been attached to the Government recapitalisation contributions to the two major banks that have received them. We will of course continue to keep the position under review.

Colin Breed: Will the Minister tell the House when he expects small businesses to be able to access the £1 billion fund? Many are in dire need at this moment at time.

Stephen Timms: Yes, I certainly do expect them to be able to access it. The full details of the new scheme will be set out at the beginning of the new year by my noble Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. Other measures that we have put in place are already effective, such as the small business support service for firms with a tax bill due that are facing temporary financial difficulty. They have been able for some weeks now to call up the HMRC hotline on 0845 302 1435, which is available seven days a week.

Rob Marris: As well as Marston's brewery, in my constituency there are many small businesses called pubs. They are extremely concerned about measures in the pre-Budget report relating to alcohol excise duty and the alcohol duty escalator. Would my right hon. Friend and his ministerial colleagues reconsider those measures because they are hurting pubs, which are vital to our communities?

Stephen Timms: The change in the VAT rate has been offset in the way that my hon. Friend describes. The position for the coming year is as my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has set out, and of course we will look at the future rates of alcohol duty in future Budgets in the normal way.

Justine Greening: For the 1,500 people losing their jobs and the 60 small businesses going bust every single day, the Government are not tackling the recession. The Government's small business loan guarantee scheme will not even be up and running until mid-January and even then it will not cover 99 per cent. of loans to companies. Does not the Minister agree that that is too little, too late, that he should get on with our national loan guarantee scheme and that Britain is facing the deepest recession of any G7 country because we have the most incompetent, ineffective Government?

Stephen Timms: The hon. Lady should have a word with some of her colleagues on her Front Bench. I agree with her that it is right for the Government to address these problems, but that contrasts with the policies of those on her Front Bench, which are the policies of do nothing. Those were the policies that we saw in the catastrophic recessions under the last Conservative Government and they are being repeated by Conservative Front Benchers now. The policies that we are putting in place are directly addressing precisely the challenges that small businesses are facing, and that is why such an ambitious and effective package was set out at the time of the pre-Budget report.

Alison Seabeck: I have listened to my right hon. Friend's response and to the questions from other hon. Members, but I want to inject a slightly more positive note into the discussion by flagging up the work of the Springboard Fund, an offshoot of Business Link based in Devon and Cornwall that resulted from the sale of Business Link. The fund has just had its 100th inquiry in the short time since it has been set up from a group of people who want to set up new businesses. There is real interest in setting up new businesses, despite the downturn. People are going to the Springboard Fund because the banks are not opening their doors—

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Lady is asking a supplementary question, and it should be brief.

Stephen Timms: Like my hon. Friend, I welcome and support the measures that the Government have in place and that the regional development agencies are supporting to encourage new enterprise. She is absolutely right that there are some very attractive opportunities for new businesses, even at this very difficult time. It is quite right that we should be working with those who are encouraging entrepreneurs to come forward and make a success of new businesses.

Economic Recovery

Michael Jack: Which sector of the economy he expects to lead economic recovery following the economic downturn; and when he expects such a recovery to begin.

Alistair Darling: The pre-Budget report set out the Government's latest economic forecast, based on all relevant factors.

Michael Jack: There was not much Christmas cheer in that answer from the Chancellor. In just over 180 days, according to the pre-Budget report, growth is supposed to resume in the UK economy. Given the mounting and ever-greater tide of difficult news about the economy and even the prospect of deflation, does the Chancellor stand by the statement he gave in his answer? Secondly, can he cite anybody outside the Treasury who actually agrees with what he has just said?

Alistair Darling: Yes, and the forecasts that we set out were broadly the same as the Bank of England's, which are entirely independent of ours. This country has a choice: we can either let the recession take its course, which is the policy that the Conservative party seems to advocate, or we can decide to take action to help people and businesses. That is the path that we have chosen.

Gavin Strang: Does my right hon. Friend agree that, although sterling's depreciation against the euro in particular will result in an increase in some input costs, overall it should provide an environment for a substantial increase in agricultural production? That will result in increased investment in food processing and manufacturing, creating more jobs and displacing imports, which we will need in the next few years.

Alistair Darling: My right hon. Friend is right that depreciation can help our exporters, but we must ensure as well that countries right across the world also take action to support their economies so that there are markets to sell into. That is why I welcome what France, Germany and other European Governments have done to support their economies, as their actions will create the right conditions to encourage and support our exporters.

Andrew MacKay: Does the Chancellor agree with his Cabinet colleague the Olympics Minister, who said this week that this is the worst recession that any of us have ever experienced?

Alistair Darling: It is true that, right across the world, we are facing conditions that we have not seen for generations. The IMF has forecast that, for the first time since the second world war, all the major economies will move into recession in 2009. That is why it is all the more necessary for every country in the world to do everything that they can to support their economies. That is what underpinned my approach to the pre-Budget report, and I am sorry that the Conservatives do not share that view.

Richard Burden: Does my right hon. Friend agree that a strong manufacturing sector will be vital when the economic recovery comes, and that the motor industry will be central to that? In addition to the welcome moves being made by the European Investment Bank, a number of European countries are offering additional lines of support to their motor industries. Will my right hon. Friend say what further plans he has for the British motor industry, to ensure that lines of credit and liquidity are kept open?

Alistair Darling: My hon. Friend knows more than many Members of the House the importance of the motor industry to this country. It is worth noting that, even in 2007, our automotive industry produced almost as many cars and vans as it did in the heyday of British car manufacturing in the 1970s, so there are many good success stories that we can point to.
	The automotive industry is being affected by the downturn, as is to be expected. As my hon. Friend knows, my noble Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform has been having discussions with some manufacturers. We will do everything we reasonably can to support the industry, but there are two things that I should like to say. First, the primary responsibility for financing a company lies with those who own it, and we must also be mindful, not only of the difficulties in the motor industry, but that other industries will be affected by the downturn. Secondly, we also have to have regard to the interests of the taxpayer. That is of critical importance, and people need to understand that.

Andrew Pelling: In his answers, the Chancellor has quite rightly emphasised the economy's exposure to the financial sector, and the role that that plays. Does he concur with the comments ascribed to Deputy Governor Bean on the front of the  Financial Times today that there is a very high expectation of further capitalisation being required for the banks?

Alistair Darling: I did see the front of today's  Financial Times, and I read the full transcript of what the deputy governor said. He was musing on a number of different matters, and in the current climate it is sensible to keep under review the circumstances of the banks all the time, just as other countries are doing. The key thing is to make sure that the banks are strong enough to resume lending, and that we get them to make that lending. There has been huge public support for the recapitalisation of the banks, and for the guarantees on lending and the special liquidity scheme. That support is very substantial.
	As I said earlier, we keep these matters under review all the time. I will continue to do whatever is necessary to maintain the banking system, because it is central to supporting the wider economy.

Gisela Stuart: This recession is global and whenever the recovery occurs, a skilled work force will be extremely important. Will my right hon. Friend therefore keep under consideration the Train to Gain budget to ensure that our skills base has not been eroded when the recovery comes?

Alistair Darling: My hon. Friend is right about that. As we come through the recession and start to see growth and recovery, there will be tremendous opportunities, but most of them will go to countries that have highly skilled and motivated work forces. We lost out badly in the 1980s and 1990s because, when the economy slowed, the reaction of the then Government was to cut back on a lot of skills and training. There are now more apprenticeships, more people with skills, and more people going to universities. We are investing heavily in science, and in many other areas we are taking the right action to ensure that we have the right skills for the future. The World Bank estimates that the world economy will double in the next 20 years, and we need to be ready to take full advantage of that when it happens.

Income Support Mortgage Interest

John Barrett: What discussions his Department has had on the criteria to be used in determining how to calculate income support mortgage interest after May 2009.

Yvette Cooper: The standard interest rate for support for mortgage interest has been frozen for six months at 6.08 per cent., rather than falling in line with Bank of England base rates as would normally be the case. We will review the position and consider what arrangements should apply beyond May 2009.

John Barrett: I thank the Minister and the Chancellor for the action taken on this issue in the pre-Budget report, but can she give me any assurances today that the help that the 62 per cent. of mortgage holders on fixed rate deals will get from the Government from May, if they lose their job, will reflect the amounts that they have to pay rather than be linked to the Bank of England base rate?

Yvette Cooper: The hon. Gentleman has raised this important point before. The standard approach would be for the standard rate to fall with bank rates as bank rates are cut. However, we know that a lot of people are on fixed rates, and many have mortgages with banks that have not yet passed on the full rate cuts. Many have seen a reduction of about £100 per month in their mortgage payment as a result of base rate cuts, but others are not benefiting. We will certainly take those issues into account, but the hon. Gentleman will appreciate that it is hard to predict at this stage where base rates will be in May and where individual mortgage rates will be.

Ken Purchase: Labour has done a great deal for pensioners in recent years, but in these very difficult times, does the Minister have any plans to review the calculation that results in a 10 per cent. notional rate of interest being placed on pensioners' savings before they can qualify for benefit? Pensioners find that difficult to understand, and I must say it is difficult for anyone to understand.

Yvette Cooper: I know that my hon. Friend has raised this issue with the Department for Work and Pensions and he will also know that we are clear about the importance of supporting pensioners through difficult times. That is exactly why, as part of our fiscal stimulus, we are providing an extra £60 to every pensioner in the new year. That is the right thing to do. It is funded by additional borrowing to help support the economy, and sadly it is something that the Conservative party has opposed.

Richard Ottaway: May I take the Minister back to the original question? What increase does she expect to see in income support mortgage interest relief as a result of the current bust?

Yvette Cooper: We are both freezing the rate and expanding eligibility, and we believe that that is the right approach to take, because by that means we are making relief available to those who have lost their job and been out of work for more than 13 weeks rather than for the full 39 weeks to which the relief used to apply. That is the right thing to do and the relief will apply to more people. We have set out costings as part of the approach to the pre-Budget report. It is certainly clear that this is about providing more support to people at a difficult time.

European Investment Bank

David Kidney: What assessment he has made of the availability of European Investment Bank funding to businesses through UK banks.

Ian Pearson: British small businesses should be able to benefit from around £4 billion of lending from the EIB between 2008 and 2011. As announced in the pre-Budget report last month, after negotiations between UK banks and the EIB, £1 billion of EIB funds will be available to British small firms by the end of the year. This has now been approved by the EIB.

David Kidney: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. Business people in Stafford are coming to me with ideas for modern, innovative new projects. When they ask the banks for funding, it is not that the banks say no; they just freeze and make no decision at all. Given that entrepreneurial spirit is the lifeblood of the country, and all the more vital in these difficult times, can I go back to those businesses and say that now they can go to their bank and get access to EIB funding?

Hon. Members: No.

Ian Pearson: Yes, he can. Loans are already being made by UK banks using EIB funds. I refer my hon. Friend to media coverage only yesterday; Barclays bank has been making funding available to companies through the European Investment Bank. The question now is for UK banks to disburse quickly and efficiently and pass on the full benefits associated with EIB funds to the small businesses that my hon. Friend was talking about—that are innovative and need those funds to help them to stabilise and grow for the future. That is exactly what is happening and more will be coming in the future.

Julie Kirkbride: The Minister has just said that this money is available in 2008, so as of today—18 December 2008—can he tell us just how much money has been forthcoming through the European Investment Bank?

Ian Pearson: As I explained, since the pre-Budget report and our agreement with the banks, approval processes have been going through the European Investment Bank. If the hon. Lady reads yesterday's edition of  The Daily Telegraph she will see that Barclays bank has £300 million available for lending to businesses. I encourage all small businesses to look to their bank managers and engage in conversation with them, and to make application for funding that is there at the moment and will continue to be available for the future. On top of that, early in the new year the small business finance scheme will also be available. That is real action being taken by the Government, not the gesturing of the Conservative party.

Balance of Payments

Henry Bellingham: What recent assessment he has made of the macro-economic effect of the UK's balance of payments.

Stephen Timms: The pre-Budget report forecast the current account deficit of the UK balance of payments to narrow in the second half of 2008 and in 2009, with net trade forecast to add three quarters of a percentage point to gross domestic product growth next year.

Henry Bellingham: Is that not an incredibly complacent reply? Is the Financial Secretary not ashamed that having inherited a trade surplus in 1997, our deficit last year was the worst since records began—when William of Orange was on the throne? Is it not a disgrace that the trade deficit in manufactured goods has grown from £7 billion in 1997 to a staggering £59 billion last year? Why do the right hon. Gentleman and the Chancellor never talk about the balance of trade? Is it any wonder that the pound is falling so sharply?

Stephen Timms: I remind the hon. Gentleman that there have actually been quite a few occasions in the past when the current account deficit was higher than it is now. To give him one example, it was 3.8 per cent. in the third quarter of 2007, but it was 4.9 per cent. in 1989 and it is more than 5 per cent. now in the United States. Our strategy is to ensure strong competition in every UK market by promoting openness to free trade, minimising product market regulation and ensuring that there are world-class competition authorities. That is the strategy we are pursuing and we will do so successfully.

Stewart Hosie: The Minister is right: for the first time in a number of years the trade deficit will narrow to about £50 billion for each of the next three years and there will be a net benefit to GDP growth rather than the 0.25 to 0.5 per cent. suppression that we seen since 2000. However, the forecasts in the pre-Budget report were made before the continuing collapse of sterling which makes imports much more expensive. Will the Treasury commit to give a new assessment early in the new year based on the current sterling situation?

Stephen Timms: Of course we will constantly monitor developments in the economy, as my right hon. Friend the Chancellor emphasised, but we stand by the forecasts we set out in the PBR and our strategy is absolutely the right one.

Government Finance

Desmond Swayne: What recent representations he has received on the level of Government borrowing.

Yvette Cooper: We have received representations covering a wide range of issues, including discussions with a series of national and international institutions which support the case for higher borrowing to support the economy.

Desmond Swayne: Does the Chief Secretary accept a representation from me that, by the Treasury's own figures, the national debt is set to double by 2012, to £1 trillion? Will she confirm that, for next year, Government borrowing as a proportion of our national income will be higher than when Denis Healey went to the International Monetary Fund?

Yvette Cooper: I should perhaps point out to the hon. Gentleman that borrowing as a proportion of gross domestic product will be not dissimilar to the level that it reached in the early 1990s, when, in fact, the Conservative party doubled the national debt in the space of just five years in response to a home-grown recession, when it did not have an international, world financial crisis to deal with on a scale that we have not seen for many generations. We think that the right thing to do is to increase borrowing right now to support the economy, so that we can come through this faster and stronger.

Graham Stuart: The German Finance Minister, in talking about the borrowing that the Government are proposing, described the result as a complete failure of Labour policy. Will the Chief Secretary perhaps explain in what way that was an internal political comment in the German context?

Yvette Cooper: As my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has already explained, the Germans have in fact increased their support for the economy with a fiscal stimulus earlier this year. We think that they were right to do that, and we will judge them on what they do, rather than on what they say. It is rather amusing that Conservative Members are now taking to quoting Europeans whom they would never have quoted before in support of their economic strategy, and they continue to be isolated—not just in Europe, but right across the world—in their opposition to action to help people through this and to support the economy right now.

Topical Questions

Greg Mulholland: If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

Alistair Darling: The Department's objectives remain the same as I said at the last Treasury questions.

Greg Mulholland: Figures released yesterday show that unemployment has risen to its highest level since 1997, with a 7 per cent. increase in the past three months in the Yorkshire and Humber region alone—devastating news for people just before Christmas, as well as a huge burden on the taxpayer. The economist, George Buckley, has said that, because unemployment is normally a lagging indicator,
	"to see so many job losses this early in the economic cycle is extremely worrying."
	Does the Chancellor agree with that? If he does, is the Government's rescue package therefore simply not good enough?

Alistair Darling: No. I believe that it is necessary, though, for us to do everything that we can to help people who lose their jobs. That is why, in the pre-Budget report, I set aside a further £1.3 billion to help the Department for Work and Pensions and Jobcentre Plus in particular, so that if people lose their jobs, we can help to match them with vacancies. It is worth bearing in mind that, even during the past month, more than 200,000 people went into work—they found new jobs—and we need to ensure that we match those people who may lose their jobs with the vacancies currently in the economy. We are taking action, but, of course, the other action that we have taken to stabilise the banking system and provide wider support for business will help as well, but I am determined to do everything that we possibly can to ensure that we help people who lose their jobs.

Alun Michael: Once crimes are committed, heavy costs fall to the criminal justice system, whereas the costs of prevention largely fall to other bodies and organisations. I am thinking of mental health, education and skills and community engagement. Will the Chancellor give fresh thought when making allocations to disbursing funds in ways that reward those organisations, bodies and agencies that work co-operatively and help the process of preventing crime and penalise those who insist on staying within their own silos?

Yvette Cooper: My right hon. Friend is right that we have far more effective results not only if we work on prevention, rather than on simply ameliorating the problems later on, but if we can get better co-ordination between agencies. That is why we have been supporting the local area agreements between councils, the police and other local organisations and doing that more widely as well. We are keen to do more to ensure that funding works in that way and supports the kind of partnership action that can, as he says, deliver results.

George Osborne: The director general of the CBI has just sent a letter to all his members that says:
	"Until this underlying issue—getting credit flowing around our economy—is resolved, economic activity cannot begin to recover",
	that the Government have failed to
	"address the root of the problem"
	and that, until they do,
	"other government initiatives to mitigate the recession will be ineffective and expensive failures".
	When will the Prime Minister and the Chancellor swallow their pride, accept that the bank recapitalisation plan has not rescued the economy and introduce a national loan guarantee scheme, which we have proposed and which this country needs?

Alistair Darling: The purpose of the recapitalisation scheme, which was clearly stated when I set out the proposals in October, was to ensure that the banking system remained viable and to rescue it from imminent collapse. We did that, and other countries right across the world did the same. I said at the time, and I say again today, that we will continue to look at that scheme to see how it can be improved and further strengthened. The director general of the CBI, to whom I spoke last night, is quite right to say that we need to do more to ensure that banks lend in the wider economy. It is important that we ensure that banks are sufficiently strong to do that, but it is also important to make sure that lending takes place.
	As for the hon. Gentleman's proposal, it is an empty promise. He talks about a national scheme, yet he has quite explicitly said that the Conservative party would spend no more money; it would do absolutely nothing, so the promise that he makes is empty. Instead, he should perhaps pay greater heed to what the chairman of the CBI said—that although there might be a cost to the fiscal stimulus, the cost would be far greater if we did nothing.

George Osborne: The national loan guarantee scheme is supported by every single business organisation. It is exactly equivalent to the inter-bank guarantees that the Government have put in place, but does not add to public expenditure. It is consistent with what the Governor and deputy governor of the Bank of England have said this week. Is not the truth that the country has been in recession for six months, and Labour's policies are not working? The Government said that they would get recapitalisation going to help start lending again, and lending is contracting. They said that their stamp duty holiday would restart the housing market, and it is plummeting. They said that they would pay bills to small businesses more quickly, and a survey today says that the situation is actually getting worse. They said that their massively expensive VAT cut would stimulate the economy, but their own former Minister, the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field), says that it is
	"like spitting in the face of an economic hurricane."—[ Official Report, 17 December 2008; Vol. 485, c. 1139.]
	Meanwhile, unemployment is soaring early in the cycle, and a Cabinet Minister says that Britain is facing the worst recession that we have ever known. Could the Chancellor explain why it is that all Labour Governments leave office with unemployment higher than when they entered office?

Alistair Darling: What the hon. Gentleman says might have more strength if he was prepared to do something to help the economy, businesses and people; he is not prepared to do so. He talks about a scheme for national lending, yet he has quite explicitly said that there will be no more money to support it. That is an empty promise. We are supporting the economy and are helping people. We have recapitalised the banks, which has prevented many banks from collapsing. We are taking steps to extend lending. The measures that we have taken in relation to VAT, to cutting income tax for basic rate taxpayers, and to helping businesses will all help in the face of a global downturn, the like of which we have not seen for generations. The Conservative party is making it quite clear that if it were in office, the choice that it would make is to do absolutely nothing to help people.  [Interruption.] That is what the Conservatives did in the 1980s and the 1990s. They can shout and bawl all they like, but the fact remains that the Conservatives' approach is wrong, muddled and would not help the British economy or the people of this country.

Harry Cohen: Earlier, the Chancellor said that the US regulatory authorities have some questions to answer about the Madoff $50 billion fraud, but at least over there they prosecute their fraudsters. Madoff was prosecuted, as was Conrad Black and the chief of Enron. The City of London has a lamentable record when it comes to investigating, prosecuting and convicting City fraudsters. Will the Chancellor or other Ministers look into that, and improve the situation, so that those associated with fraudulent activities that have led to the credit crunch here in the UK are prosecuted?

Alistair Darling: Earlier this year, in the summer, I set out proposals to strengthen the powers available to the Financial Services Authority, so that if there is wrongdoing in markets it can take action and, if necessary, make criminal prosecutions.

Richard Ottaway: In the pre-Budget report, the Government announced value-for-money savings of £5 billion. Is the Chancellor aware, however, that this week the Public Accounts Committee found that a cost-saving initiative at the Department for Transport cost one and a half times the sum of money that it was trying to save? On that basis, the savings initiative will cost taxpayers £7 billion. Does that not prove that this is a say-anything, achieve-nothing Government?

Yvette Cooper: As the hon. Gentleman will know, and as the Public Accounts Committee will be aware, the Government have in fact achieved more than the original targets for the Gershon savings, which were more than £20 billion; there has been considerable independent examination of that. Furthermore, we are on course to deliver more than £30 billion in efficiency savings as part of the comprehensive spending review, and we have set these further targets now as part of the pre-Budget report. That contrasts with the approach of the hon. Gentleman's party; his party leader said:
	"It cannot and must not simply be about 'efficiency savings'"—
	presumably, his party prefers service cuts.

Jo Swinson: The economic downturn is hitting East Dunbartonshire hard. Flexible Ducting has announced the closure of its Milngavie plant with the loss of 85 jobs, and unemployment has risen by 36 per cent. in the past year. Instead of tinkering, with a VAT cut, surely the Chancellor should invest the money to kick-start the economy by investing in green initiatives to create jobs, cut energy bills and tackle climate change.

Yvette Cooper: I agree with the hon. Lady that we want to keep investing to support green jobs. That is a great opportunity for us for the future; it is certainly an issue on which the new Department is working hard. We need to continue to invest in things such as the capital projects. That is why a major part of the fiscal stimulus was bringing forward capital programmes to support jobs. However, it is also right to put money into people's pockets right now, very quickly, to help support the economy. Hon. Members on both sides should recognise that the scale of the economic challenges that face every single country in the world means that we have to take a whole range of measures. That is the best way to get the kind of action that we need and to help us come through this situation faster.

Ken Purchase: Despite the Chancellor's efforts to recapitalise the banks—and he has done everything that he can in that direction—is it not the case that banks must not enter into a reckless round of lending, but look for good companies, which will be around at the other side of this recession, to take advantage of his generosity at this point? Is it not also the case that banks rightly recognise that too many boardrooms are stuffed with old Etonians who have no idea of how to deal with modern business, but allow themselves to be fooled by greed and avarice and go into schemes that lose billions for their country?

Hon. Members: Speak for Loretto!

Alistair Darling: I do think that it is important— [Interruption.] Mr. Speaker, you have only to look at the behaviour of those on the Opposition Front Bench to see how fit they are to run anything. I agree with my hon. Friend. Although we want to encourage banks to lend into the wider economy, banks need to be certain that they engage in responsible lending and do not end up lending money to people who cannot repay the loans that they take out.

Michael Jack: This week, the Public Accounts Committee has alerted us to the fact that the Department for Transport's initiative on shared services is to cost the taxpayer £81 million. In the same week, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has been fined £75 million because of its failure to deliver on the Rural Payments Agency. What steps is the Chief Secretary to the Treasury taking to make certain that those Departments bear proper responsibility for that profligate waste of the public's money? Who is going to resign, and what will she do to prevent such things from happening in future?

Yvette Cooper: It is exactly because it is important to make sure that we pursue every avenue in tackling waste and inefficiencies that we have the Public Accounts Committee, the National Audit Office and the Audit Commission. It is right that there should be all those organisations and that they should do their jobs in pursuing such matters. It is also right that Departments need to take greater action to root out waste wherever they find it. That is why we have set the further target of another £5 billion of efficiency savings in 2010.

Andrew MacKay: Way back in July, the parliamentary ombudsman published a telling report on Equitable Life. That was immediately followed by a promise from the Leader of the House that the Government would respond with a statement from the Dispatch Box in the autumn. That did not happen, and during the Queen's Speech debate the Prime Minister clearly and twice repeated that there would be a statement before Christmas. Why is the Chancellor defying his Prime Minister?

Ian Pearson: I had hoped that we would be able to make a statement on Equitable Life before the recess, and it is a matter of regret to me that we have not been able to do so. I apologise to the House and to the Prime Minister for the fact that it has taken a little bit longer than I would have liked to get the policy options to a stage where we can make a firm decision and issue a statement. My right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House has announced that a statement will be made when we come back after the Christmas recess, and I am sure that that will be the case.

Danny Alexander: People in the highlands and islands want to see all levels of government working together to tackle the economic crisis. Will the Chancellor therefore join me in condemning the Scottish Government's decision to cut nearly £100 million from the budget of Highlands and Islands Enterprise over the next three years, at a time when that organisation should be helping the local economy? Will he work with the Highland council to help it to bring forward measures to boost the local housing market, particularly through construction, so that we can help to create jobs in a sector where there have been huge job losses in my area over the past few months?

Alistair Darling: I agree with the hon. Gentleman. We need to ensure that we support jobs in all parts of the country, including the highlands and islands of Scotland. The nationalist Administration could do far more than they are doing. For example, we have said that we want to bring forward public investment; they have said in principle that they are prepared to do that but have yet to come up with specific proposals. Moreover, their reforms of the private finance initiative have meant, in effect, that a lot of investment has been sterilised. It is high time that they realised the importance of getting on with supporting the whole Scottish economy as well as that of the highlands and islands.

Iraq

Gordon Brown: With permission, Mr. Speaker, following my visit to Baghdad and Basra yesterday, I shall make a statement about the future of British troops in Iraq, the timetables, our legal agreements and our force numbers.
	Let me begin by asking the whole House to join me in paying tribute to the heroism of all our armed forces and to their service and sacrifice in Iraq and, of course, in Afghanistan and in peacemaking missions around the globe. Let me pay particular tribute to those who have given their lives in the service of our country—military and civilian personnel. We salute their courage and will honour their achievements. Today we remember in particular Lieutenant Aaron Lewis, 29 Commando Royal Artillery, killed in Afghanistan on Monday, and the soldier from 1st Battalion The Rifles killed in Afghanistan yesterday. At the time of Christmas their families are uppermost in our thoughts.
	On 22 July, I set out to the House the key remaining tasks for the UK's mission in Iraq, and I can today report progress on all these tasks. Taken together, the tasks that we set ourselves reflect our underlying priorities: security for the region, democracy in Iraq, and reconstruction to help the Iraqi people—security against terrorists, strengthening democracy in place of dictatorship, and reconstruction to give Iraq's people a stake in the future.
	First, on security, our aim has been to entrench security improvements by putting Iraqis in charge of their own defence and policing for the future. Our most recent contribution has been to help with training thousands of new Iraqi forces and policemen and women. In total, the UK has helped to train more than 20,000 troops and more than 22,000 police. In total across Iraq, 500,000 troops and police have been trained by the Americans, the UK and other forces. In addition, we have already mentored three brigades of 14th Division, with 9,000 troops, to become combat-ready—the very troops that have repeatedly mounted successful independent operations making Basra now safer for its citizens. As a result, in the past year violence and criminality in the Basra region have fallen dramatically. Yesterday, I met the commander of the Iraqi 14th Division and Iraqi security forces and their embedded British training teams working with them in Basra. I can tell the House that our commanders judge that training is making good progress and is now nearing completion.
	Our second task is to strengthen Iraqis' emerging democracy. At the heart of embedding democracy is the most immediate task of ensuring successful local provincial elections. Provincial elections are now scheduled for 31 January 2009. Conditions are in place nationwide for a high turnout under a UN-supervised process, with security led by Iraqis' own security forces.
	Thirdly, there is reconstruction and our aim to give the Iraqi people an economic stake in the future. That has meant restoring economic activity and building basic services in the Basra area.
	Recent proposals for new investment in the Basra area now amount to $9 billion-worth of projects. With assistance from Mr. Michael Wareing, whom I thank, the Department for International Development has helped arrange 18 investment missions in the past few months. Following our London and Kuwait investment conferences, the new Basra investment commission, which we helped establish, is holding a major investment conference today in Istanbul. In addition, the Basra development commission has launched a youth employment scheme, which already works with nearly 100 employers to give work experience and training to potentially thousands of young Iraqi people.
	We have helped rebuild the economic infrastructure. Since 2003, we have spent £100 million on giving more than 1 million people improved access to clean water and power. Basra airport, which is central to future economic development, is now under effective Iraqi civilian control, delivering on the commitment that I outlined to the House in July. That includes air traffic control and management of the airport terminal—now under the control of the Iraqi authorities—and we expect to complete formal handover arrangements at the turn of the year.
	Since criminal gangs were driven out of the port of Umm Qasr by the Operation Charge of the Knights Brigade, there are now plans for major port expansion. New investor proposals and contracts, including from British companies, offer the potential to make Basra once again the major trading hub in the region.
	On 1 January 2009, with the expiry of United Nations resolution 1790, Iraq will regain its full sovereignty. Yesterday in Baghdad, I told Prime Minister Maliki, and he agreed, that British forces in Iraq should have time to finish the missions that I have just outlined. In the past three weeks, concluding with our talks yesterday, we have made substantial progress with the Government of Iraq. We have defined: first, the tasks that need to completed; secondly, the authorisations needed to complete them; and thirdly, a way to provide a firm legal basis for our forces. At all times, we have worked closely with President Bush and the Americans, and our other coalition partners.
	On 16 December, the Iraqi Council of Ministers agreed to submit to the Council of Representatives a short draft law to give the presence of UK forces a legal basis after 1 January. The law is now going through the Iraqi Council of Representatives; it had its first reading yesterday and is scheduled to have its second reading on 20 December. We expect the process to be complete before UN resolution 1790 expires. In the event of the process not being complete, the Iraqis have told us that Coalition Provisional Authority order 17, which confers protection on coalition troops, will remain in place. Our troops will therefore have the legal basis that they need for the future.
	Once we have completed our four tasks, including training for the headquarters and specialists of 14th Division—with the precise timing of its completion decided by commanders on the ground—the fundamental change of mission that I described in the House last summer will take place by 31 May 2009 at the latest. At that point, we will begin a rapid withdrawal of our troops, taking the total from just under 4,100 to under 400 by 31 July. The majority of the remaining troops will be dedicated to naval training.
	Yesterday, Mr. Maliki and I agreed that Britain's future role will focus on continuing protection against attack of Iraqi oil platforms in the northern Gulf, together with long-term training of the Iraqi navy—work that I saw for myself at the port—and support for training the officers of the Iraqi armed forces. In other words, that is the realisation of a normal defence relationship, similar to those we have with our other key partners in the region, which I agreed with Mr. Maliki in July was our joint objective for 2009.
	Of course, that relationship will be one strand of a broader, enduring relationship with democratic Iraq, which I also discussed yesterday with the Prime Minister. Our future relationship will be one of partnership. We agreed to continue the shift of focus to economic, commercial, cultural and educational relationships. We will maintain a large embassy headed by a senior ambassador in Baghdad and maintain small missions in Basra and Erbil. The embassy in Baghdad will expand its commercial office and the Department for International Development will expand its programme of economic advice in Baghdad. We have discussed a plan with Prime Minister Maliki for British companies to provide expertise to the Iraqi Ministry of Oil, and Britain can help Iraq's plans to give 10,000 Iraqi students scholarships overseas.
	In the past five and a half years, Iraq has faced great challenges and endured dark days, but it has also made significant progress. We can be proud of the way in which our forces carried out their mission in the most difficult times, and we can be proud of what they have accomplished. In my discussions with Prime Minister Maliki, the two vice-presidents, the Basra governor and the army leadership, I was assured of Iraq's continuing gratitude for Britain's role in freeing Iraq from tyranny. The UK's new relationship with the new Iraq is one that has been justly earned by the efforts and sacrifices of our forces, and by our contributions to Iraq's peace and reconstruction.
	Iraq has many challenges to confront in the days to come. No road that it takes will be easy, but today's levels of violence across the whole of Iraq are at their lowest for five years, economic growth this year is almost 10 per cent., and yesterday, in Basra, I was told that for just 35 seats being contested in the provincial assembly elections in January, there are more than 1,270 candidates, with 53 different party labels, standing for election. So, as Iraq approaches its second free provincial elections, democracy is clearly growing.
	In supporting and protecting the progress that we have made, the British campaign has endured great hardship and sacrifice. Yesterday, I stood with the Chief of the Defence Staff, the head of the Iraqi army in Basra and members of our own forces outside our headquarters in Basra, in front of the memorial wall naming and commemorating every single one of the 178 British servicemen and women who have lost their lives in Iraq in the service of our country. It was a fitting and moving tribute to men and women whom we must never forget. Because remembrance is vitally important, the Defence Secretary and I have decided, after consultation, that we shall bring that memorial wall now standing in Basra home to a fitting resting place of its own in our own country. We will do so when, at the end of July, the last of our combat troops leave Basra. It is a memorial now for ever to be in Britain. I commend this statement to the House.

David Cameron: May I particularly welcome what the Prime Minister has just said about the wall in Basra? I think that that is absolutely right. I join him in paying tribute to the soldier from 1st Battalion The Rifles who was killed in Afghanistan yesterday, and to Lieutenant Aaron Lewis, who was also killed. Our thoughts should be with their families and friends, particularly at this time of Christmas.
	Everyone, and not least the families of those still serving in Iraq, will welcome today's announcement on troop withdrawal. As I have seen for myself in Iraq and elsewhere, our forces always carry out the tasks that are assigned to them with professionalism and courage, and they are a credit to this country. We should also recognise that, as well as the Army, the Navy and the RAF have both served superbly in Iraq. Today of all days, we must remember the fallen in Iraq and the many who have been wounded. Since March 2003, 178 have lost their lives. Their friends and families are in our thoughts and prayers at this time. I should also like to pay tribute to the local Iraqi interpreters, some of whom took unbelievable risks on our behalf. They deserve not only our thanks but our sanctuary.
	On the legal basis for our troops, of which the Prime Minister gave a full explanation, will he confirm that, in the first half of next year, they will have exactly the same legal protection as the Americans, under their status of forces agreement, particularly if they need to defend themselves using force? Can he also tell us what the terms of the legal agreement will be between May and July next year—that is, after the end of the mission but before a number of our troops have returned?
	Three key issues arise from the statement: first, the achievements of the last six years; secondly, the handover next year; and thirdly, the lessons that we must learn for elsewhere, especially Afghanistan. First, on the last six years, does the Prime Minister agree that, like all of us who supported the action in Iraq, he needs to strike a realistic tone about what has, and has not, been achieved? Security has undoubtedly improved over the past few months. The Maliki Government can now take the lead in upholding order and, crucially, as the Prime Minister said, the people of Iraq have at least seen a potential democratic way forward. Does he accept, however, that the economic conditions and the state of basic services mean that the daily reality for many Iraqi citizens remains dire? Given that women are being attacked in Basra for not wearing the hijab, and that many Christians are still being persecuted, does he agree that serious human rights abuses remain?
	That brings me to the second issue—the handover. Clearly, Iraqi forces will still have help from US forces. What is the Prime Minister's assessment of the ability of the Iraqi security forces and the police to maintain security in the medium term? It is clearly in all our interests that Iraq remains a united sovereign country, so can the Prime Minister provide an assessment of the current role of Iran in southern Iraq? Does the Prime Minister agree that, as part of being a sovereign united country, it is essential that Iraq enjoys normal relations with all its neighbours? Can he tell us what steps he is taking to encourage all Arab countries to send ambassadors and fully staffed embassies to Baghdad?
	In terms of the economy, Iraq has a large fiscal surplus. Can the Prime Minister tell us more about the steps he is taking to ensure that British firms benefit from that and from reconstruction projects? Can he confirm specifically that, until recently, there was no permanent representative of the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform in our embassy and can he tell us whether that has been put right?
	The third issue is the lessons for elsewhere, and particularly for Afghanistan. Does the Prime Minister agree that Iraq has taught us some tough lessons in the need for such missions to be carefully planned not just in the war fighting, but in the post-conflict phase? Does he agree that they must have clear and specific objectives and must be properly resourced from the outset? Does he accept that the mission in Iraq was deficient in all those respects and that it is essential that we do not perpetuate those mistakes in the continuing mission in Afghanistan? Does he agree that, crucially, an important lesson is that any increases in armed forces will succeed only if they are accompanied by genuine political progress? Is it not the case that in Iraq it was only when key sections of the population decided to lend support to the Government and not the insurgency that the real breakthrough was made? Does he agree that that will be equally important in Afghanistan?
	With the need to learn all these lessons in mind, will the Prime Minister tell us why he has not today announced a full-scale independent inquiry? Should we not be clear about the purpose of such an inquiry, which is not simply to rework exhaustively the decision to go to war, important though that is, but to examine the mistakes made in its conduct and planning? Does the Prime Minister accept that if we do not learn from the mistakes of the past, we are more likely to make them again in the future? Surely we do not have to wait until all the troops have been withdrawn, as inquiries have been held before when our troops have been deployed. After all, with 400 British troops remaining in Iraq into the future, if we follow the Prime Minister's logic, there will be no inquiry for many, many years.
	What we surely need is a robust, independent inquiry with powers and membership comparable to the Franks inquiry into the Falklands war. Should it not examine the origins and conduct of the war in their entirety and be able to question Ministers, including all the members of the War Cabinet? Will the Prime Minister give a commitment today to set up such an inquiry so that we can learn from the mistakes that were made? Does he not agree with me that that is just one of the many things that we owe to our brave armed forces?

Gordon Brown: We are in total agreement about the contribution that our forces have made, about the help that we have been given by Iraqi citizens and about the need for economic development and political advances in democracy always to complement what is done militarily. Where I part company with the right hon. Gentleman is that I do not believe that Iraq is an exact parallel to Afghanistan— [Interruption.] Well, Afghanistan was a country held by the Taliban, but it was virtually ungovernable and had very little economic development. Iraq is confronted by a number of problems, including divisions within the country between different groupings as it deals with the legacy of Saddam Hussein. As the right hon. Gentleman rightly says, it also has the presence of Iran as a threat on its border. I believe that we have to look at some of the things we have done in Iraq as quite different from what we are doing in Afghanistan.
	As to the right hon. Gentleman's questions about what will happen over the next few months, I am satisfied that the overwatch we have carried out over the last period of time, in which Iraqis themselves have been involved in combat and we have been training them, sometimes while embedded among them, for future purposes, means that as we leave, the Iraqi forces are strong enough both to maintain order in the Basra area and to have policing services that, although not ideal, are sufficient for the task.
	Of course, there are very difficult days ahead for Iraq. It still has a great deal of work to do, as the right hon. Gentleman said, on rebuilding its economy, but I believe that we have made a very significant contribution to that. Iraq still has a lot of work to do in improving its democracy, and the local government elections will be important to it. Of course, there is still far more to do to train its navy. That is one of the reasons why, as I saw yesterday, a great deal of British work will now involve helping the navy to do what it has to do to be a strong navy in the area.
	The right hon. Gentleman asked about the agreement between our forces and the Iraqi Government. The agreement provides the conditions under which, following the expiry of the UN resolutions, our forces can be protected while in the country. I will place in the Library the document that is going to the Iraqi provisional assembly, the Council of Representatives. It contains means by which, if there are disputes on these matters, they can be resolved, and it maintains that if a case came up, any person concerned would remain in British detention, not Iraqi detention, during the period of the investigation. It is similar but not entirely similar to the United States' agreement. We should remember that the United States' presence will be longer. It is engaged more than we are in combat operations, and the discussions with the Iraqi authorities were different from the very special discussions that we had with the Iraqi authorities.
	May I add one point about the economic situation? We have a large number of people helping the Iraqis to develop their economy. Michael Wareing has done a huge amount of work and is holding the investment conference today. I have met the Basra development commission on a number of occasions. The Secretary of State for International Development and the Foreign Secretary have been deeply involved in helping it.
	I was asked about the involvement of the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. There will be a UK Trade & Investment presence, which is a joint Foreign Office-Business Department operation, and the Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform will visit Basra and the area at the start of the year. I was also asked about embassies. The United Arab Emirates recently set up an embassy in Baghdad, and we are encouraging other countries to do so.
	Equipment is an issue that often comes up in relation to lessons that we must learn. I can say today that the Secretary of State for Defence is announcing that the Ministry of Defence has signed a contract worth more than £150 million to buy more than 100 new tracked all-terrain vehicles, which will be known as Warthog and will provide improved protection for our forces, while retaining the all-terrain capability of Viking vehicles, which have proved invaluable over the past two years in the terrain of Iraq and Afghanistan. Whenever money has been required for new equipment, armour or helicopters, we have been prepared to provide it.
	As for the right hon. Gentleman's last point about an inquiry, I should say to him that the Franks inquiry dealt only with the causes leading up to the Falklands war, not the war itself. I presume that what he is proposing is different, not the same as the Franks inquiry, but I have always said that this is a matter that we will consider once our troops have come home. We are not in that position at present, so it is not right to open the question now. That is the course of action that the Foreign Secretary, I and others have stated to the House on many occasions.

Nicholas Clegg: I would obviously like to add my own expressions of sympathy and condolence to the family and friends of the unnamed soldier from 1st Battalion The Rifles and Lieutenant Aaron Lewis, who tragically lost their lives in Afghanistan. Their deaths are reminders of the sacrifice and bravery of all British servicemen and servicewomen who have lost their lives over the past year.
	Let me be clear: I passionately believe that it was a mistake to invade Iraq, but I am second to none in my admiration for the professionalism, dedication and courage of British servicemen and servicewomen. That is why I share their relief and the relief of their long-suffering families that they will finally be coming home soon. We should all be proud of them. But are the Government not ashamed of what they have asked them to do, and are the Conservatives not ashamed that they cheered the Government on? Listening to the Prime Minister's extraordinarily rosy account of Iraq, one would have been forgiven for thinking that nothing had ever gone wrong.
	Is the Prime Minister not ashamed that he and the Conservatives sent our brave servicemen and servicewomen into an illegal war? When will the Prime Minister apologise for what he did, signing the cheques for George Bush's invasion? Is not the true scandal today, as we look back at that fateful decision to send our troops into battle in Iraq, the single worst foreign policy decision in the past 50 years, that not one of the men and women on the Government Benches and on the Conservative Benches will apologise for what they did? Is it not time for the Government and the Conservatives to hold up their hands and say sorry to the British people for Iraq?
	I am proud to be speaking from the Liberal Democrat Benches today and leading the only party that was steadfast in its opposition to this illegal war. Does the Prime Minister remember that when my party voted—every single Liberal Democrat MP voted to stop the war—his party and the Conservatives booed and jeered? President-elect Obama called the Iraq invasion a "dumb war". Obama was right; they were wrong.
	We have paid a huge cost for the Government's decision to cover George Bush's back, following him, no questions asked, into an unethical, unjustified and illegal invasion—a human cost, the cost to our own standing in the world and to the rule of law and good government here at home, the cost of increased radicalisation and instability in the Arab world and beyond, and an immense cost to British taxpayers, at £4 million every day, and counting. Does the Prime Minister now accept Joseph Stiglitz's estimate that the Iraq war will have cost us £20 billion? That is equivalent to about 800 of the Chinook helicopters that our troops desperately need in Afghanistan.
	Will the Prime Minister commit himself to a full inquiry? Unlike the Franks inquiry, it should be open. It should be held in public, because it is the public who need to see and hear that lessons really are being learned. The Government must not end this war as they started it—in secret, unaccountable and behind closed doors. Does the Prime Minister agree— [Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. Let the right hon. Gentleman speak.

Nicholas Clegg: Of course hon. Members do not want to be reminded of the past. They refuse to learn the lessons for the future.
	Does the Prime Minister agree that we do not need an inquiry to know who bears the heavy responsibility for invading Iraq five and a half years ago? It is on the record in the votes of the House, because for all the shouting and heckling that we hear today from those on both the Conservative and Labour Benches, they know that they were the ones who let this happen. They know that their votes signed us up to George Bush's war. They had the choice; they let Britain down.

Gordon Brown: I appreciated what the right hon. Gentleman said right at the beginning—that he, too, welcomed the contribution and the sacrifice that had been made by our troops in Iraq, just as they make sacrifices and serve us with distinction every day in Afghanistan and in every other part of the world where they are fighting.
	I should remind the right hon. Gentleman that the war in Iraq was not a secret war, as it was voted for in the House by a majority of the House; that Iraq was a dictatorship and is now a democracy; that Iraq had persistently defied international law; and that Iraq is now in line, as a democracy, with the laws of the rest of the world. As for everything else he says, people can be proud today that Iraq is in a far better position than it was five years ago.

Don Touhig: I welcome my right hon. Friend's statement today, and in particular his announcement at the end of his statement that the Basra memorial wall will be brought to this country. Will the Government find a suitable opportunity, when all our troops are back, to allow the people of this country to demonstrate publicly their admiration and affection for the brave men and women of our armed forces?

Gordon Brown: We will look at the circumstances in which the memorial wall is returned to Britain and what can be done. Of course, there is also a permanent memorial to all those who have given their lives in the service of Britain since the second world war. That was established last year. We will consider what my right hon. Friend says.

James Arbuthnot: Does the Prime Minister agree that the democracy in Iraq is not perfect, but it is improving; that the security situation in Iraq is very far from perfect, but it, too, is improving; that Iraq no longer poses a threat to its own population, to the region and to the world; and that now is the time to pay an enormous tribute to the soldiers of the United States, of the United Kingdom and of our allies for their enormous sacrifices and for their huge achievements?

Gordon Brown: I am grateful for the right hon. Gentleman's words, which I think will command great support in the House. I pay tribute not only to the British and American forces, and the forces from other countries, that contributed to the effort in Iraq, but to the Iraqi people, who—sometimes under huge provocation and huge persecution—have contributed to the building of their democracy.

Ann Clwyd: I am very proud that this country helped to free Iraq from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein. Anyone who has followed the history of Iraq will know that we did the right thing at that particular time.
	I am glad that the Prime Minister has reaffirmed that the withdrawal of our military efforts does not mean an end to our commitment to the people of Iraq, and that they will continue to benefit from our ongoing support for civil society and particularly for human rights. He will be interested to know that at a very successful conference that I chaired at the Foreign Office this week, attended by three Iraqi Ministers and 50 outside participants, the universal view was that that kind of British involvement would be essential in the future, which was very welcome.

Gordon Brown: I pay tribute to the work that my right hon. Friend has done as a special envoy to Iraq, the work that she has done with the Kurdish population of Iraq, and the work that she continues to do to bring about reconciliation between the different communities of Iraq. She is absolutely right that the relationship between Iraq and Britain will be strengthened at a cultural, economic, educational and social level, and I discussed that with Prime Minister Maliki yesterday. We will invite Iraqi students to come to Britain with scholarships that the Iraqi Government wish to provide; we now have a history of economic engagement with the Iraqi people in helping to rebuild their economy; we are helping young people to obtain jobs in circumstances in which otherwise they would be without work; and in every part of Iraq, not just in Basra, we want to build long-term connections with the Iraqi people.

Douglas Hogg: Withdrawal from Iraq will doubtless lead to increased pressure to deploy further United Kingdom troops in Afghanistan. Does the Prime Minister agree that we should not do so unless other major NATO countries are prepared to deploy troops in a combat role in Helmand province? Will he tell the House what conversations he has had with other major NATO countries—at the European Council last week, or since then—about their willingness to do that, and what their response was? The House is entitled to a clear and unambiguous answer.

Gordon Brown: I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for asking questions to which I can give clear answers.
	We will look at the situation in Afghanistan—as we do now—on its own merits, and in the light of what needs to be done because of what is happening in Afghanistan itself. To that extent, it is unrelated to any decisions that we make in Iraq. At the same time, we have already announced the deployment of additional forces in Afghanistan on two occasions in the past year, most recently earlier this week, and, as the right hon. and learned Gentleman knows, we are making a substantial contribution to the 41-member coalition in Afghanistan.
	It is right to emphasise the need for burden-sharing, whether it applies to troops, equipment or the financing of some of the operations in Afghanistan. I said on Monday that that would be a major theme of the NATO summit which will take place on 3 and 4 April. Burden-sharing is essential if we are to defeat the Taliban and retain Afghanistan as a democracy playing its proper role in the world. Obviously we continue to discuss the issue with Germany, France and other countries, but the right hon. and learned Gentleman should not fail to note that a substantial additional number of troops have been brought in by, for example, the French in the past few months.

Keith Vaz: I welcome the Prime Minister's visit yesterday and his statement today. As he knows, 300 Iraqi interpreters have been killed so far. He also knows that last year the Government made an honourable statement that they would allow an immigration concession enabling those people to settle in the United Kingdom. How many have now settled in the United Kingdom, and how many remain to be processed? Will he assure the House that the process will have been completed by the time the last of our troops returns home?

Gordon Brown: As my right hon. Friend knows, this is a difficult and complex issue. We wish to thank the Iraqis who risked their lives and their safety to be of assistance to us. I believe that the policy we announced on 9 and 30 October 2007 strikes the right balance between what we must do to protect those people and how we can at the same time maintain the levels of expenditure in our country that are necessary to finance it.
	So far, more than 300 staff have chosen and received the financial package that we offered, and 72 staff and dependants have been resettled in the United Kingdom. A further 100 will arrive in the coming months. We are on track to meet our target of 300 approved for admission to the United Kingdom this year under the gateway refugee resettlement programme. Given the number of Iraqis who have worked for Her Majesty's Government and the armed forces in some capacity since 2003, it is absolutely right to focus assistance on those who have had the closest and most sustained association with us. That can be done through the objective eligibility criteria that we have set, based on length of service and job profile, so we are well on the way to implementing the policy that we announced last year.

Charles Kennedy: While the Prime Minister was correct to speak of the plans to bring home the remembrance memorial for the 178 personnel whom this country lost in Iraq—let us hope that that total is not added to over the next six months—was there not something fundamentally remiss about his statement? It made no reference whatever to the last memorial that we leave behind of the vast number of innocent Iraqis—men, women and children, young and old alike—who perished during all this. Most shamefully in terms of history, the Americans and ourselves did not even bother to count the tally. Will the Prime Minister acknowledge that while those people may be lost to history, they are not lost in the hearts of their families and communities, and that that bitterness and legacy of hatred will now go on for generations? Is there anything arising from today's statement that he and his American counterparts will endeavour to do to redress the grotesque oversight of no body count and no names?

Gordon Brown: I acknowledge the sufferings of the Iraqi people. It is precisely to protect and support the Iraqi people that we have been trying to provide better facilities, jobs and help in the area of Basra where we have been most active. I think the right hon. Gentleman will find that, according to opinion surveys, the Iraqi people believe that the presence of British troops has made a difference to the quality of their lives. He must not forget the violence practised against the Iraqi people by Saddam Hussein, and we must not forget that we were dealing with a dictatorship and that we now have a democracy.

Tony Lloyd: The whole country will strongly welcome my right hon. Friend's statement, and will recognise his commitment to strengthening not just the security situation but the economic and political institutions that underlie it. However, the world has a disconcerting habit of moving on from a crisis once that crisis disappears from the headlines. My right hon. Friend's own commitment guarantees a bilateral relationship, but how can we guarantee that the rest of the world remains engaged? It is in Britain's and Iraq's vital interests that those institutions continue to be strengthened.

Gordon Brown: It is important to recognise that countries that were not part of the coalition in Iraq are now part of the engagement with Iraq that is taking place with a view to the future. I am impressed by the number of Arab countries that are now prepared to place their embassies in Baghdad, and when I was in Kuwait last night I was impressed by the co-operation that it now wants with Iraq on both economic and political matters.
	My hon. Friend is right: we must not forget that Iraq has serious difficulties to overcome. It has a long and hard path to travel towards full democracy and full security for its people. It has massive oil reserves, but it has not been able to benefit from them because of the inefficiency of its oil system. Iraq has a long way to go, but it is part of our determination to work with it at an economic and cultural level in the future, and I believe that a growing number of countries share that view.

Bernard Jenkin: Does the Prime Minister agree that for all the terrible difficulties that have been faced in Iraq—not least by our own armed forces during our time there—history is likely to judge the removal of Saddam Hussein as the right thing to do and as a success, and that our armed forces will be seen to have played a decisive role in that? Does he understand, however, the sense of unease felt by many in the armed forces and others that we are snatching defeat from the jaws of victory? If now is the right time for the British to leave, why are the Americans taking over so much of the role that we are abandoning? Is it not just the case that we have run out of military capacity and political will, and that we are, in effect, being asked to leave because we cannot effectively contribute anything further with what we have available to us?

Gordon Brown: I agree very much with the first part of the hon. Gentleman's remarks—that the removal of Saddam Hussein will be seen in history as a decisive act that made possible a democracy in Iraq—but I do not agree with his final comments, as the role that we have played in Iraq is in many cases now being taken over by the Iraqi forces and people. Whereas we used to be the organisers of any combat action in Basra, any interventions that had to be made in the town of Basra and the protection of the area, that is now being done by the Iraqi army and police. We have trained them to a point at which our commanders are satisfied that they have the ability and capacity to do that job. It is Iraqi servicemen who are doing the work previously done by British servicemen, and I would have thought that the hon. Gentleman would have applauded that.

David Winnick: Whatever the mistakes—some of them absolutely disastrous—particularly by the United States in the occupation arising from the invasion of Iraq, does my right hon. Friend not agree that the vast majority of victims referred to by the former leader of the Liberal party, the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Mr. Kennedy), died as a result of sectarian violence? That violence against totally innocent people must be recognised as a crime, but that crime was committed not by the British or Americans, but by those totally opposed to the democratic process in Iraq, and we should say so clearly and loudly.

Gordon Brown: People understand that that is the case. The internal violence in Iraq is something British and American forces have had to deal with, but I should also make the point that while Saddam Hussein was in power, violence—and in one case genocide—was practised against the Iraqi people.

Paul Keetch: At least I agree with the Prime Minister on one thing—his tribute to our armed forces, whose valour, distinction and professionalism are unique. In return, will he agree with me on one thing: when we invaded Iraq in March 2003, she did not possess weapons of mass destruction available to be deployed against British interests in 45 minutes?

Gordon Brown: That issue has been raised over and over, and there have been a number of inquiries. I do not think that the hon. Gentleman expects me to add to that today.

Jim Sheridan: Does the Prime Minister agree that one of the measures of the progress of democracy in Iraq is the fact that its own citizens, and, indeed, its journalists, can protest against their own leaders and world leaders—as happened with President Bush—without the fear of death, while under the previous Administration of Saddam Hussein anyone who made a protest suffered torture and a violent death, as did their families?

Gordon Brown: Iraq has a free press and, as we saw yesterday, a Council of Representatives that is not predictable in everything that it does. So far as shoes are concerned, I must say that the House of Commons is often less well behaved than an Iraqi press conference.

Nicholas Soames: I join hon. Members on both sides of the House in praising the exceptional success of British troops in Iraq. At this time of year, we should also remember their families, who have been so steadfast for so long. Will the Prime Minister reflect on the fact that British troops have through the war-fighting phase and into the peacekeeping phase exhibited a range of skills almost unmatched by any other armed forces anywhere in the world, and that those skills are sustained, at the same time as we are fighting in Afghanistan only by a considerable investment in defence training? Will the Prime Minister bear that in mind when those very great demands come to be made?

Gordon Brown: I agree about the importance of equipment, and I also agree with what the hon. Gentleman said about the families of servicemen and women. I was in Basra yesterday, where I met large numbers of people who will be spending Christmas away from their families. One of the things that they want to thank the British people for is the large number of unsolicited gifts, presents and cards that have been sent directly to the forces in Baghdad. They said to me that they have never seen such a level of support in any of the previous years they have been in Baghdad. Donations and presents to remember them at Christmas have come from a large number of people in all parts of the country.
	On equipment, we have provided £4 billion for urgent operational requirements in the past few years. I have announced today new spending of £150 million to buy more than 100 new Warthog tractor all-terrain vehicles. We have always tried to respond to requests, such as for helicopters, better night equipment or better vehicles, and we will continue to do so. The hon. Gentleman has taken a huge interest in defence over many years, and I have great respect for him on those matters. I say to him that he must ask his own Conservative Front Benchers about those issues, because their decision to cut public spending from 2010 means that they cannot support the defence forces in the way in which we can.

Tom Levitt: May I add to the comments of my right hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd)? I also welcome today's statement. While my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister rightly focused on the security situation and the economic development of Iraq, will he say a little more about the development of civil society in Iraq, and in particular about the way in which the Department for International Development, British development non-governmental organisations and possibly even British volunteers in future may help to contribute to social cohesion and an effective civil society in Iraq?

Gordon Brown: My hon. Friend has taken a long-term interest in that. DFID has worked mainly in the Basra area over the past few years. It has set up the Basra development commission and worked with a number of business men to bring jobs and industries to Basra. One very interesting project is being run on the model of the Prince's Trust in Britain, where young unemployed people are taken on through individual firms. I think that everybody welcomes that, and it could be applied to the rest of Iraq. That is why DFID's interest and the work in terms of civil society will now move from Basra to other parts of Iraq to seek to build better institutions for the future and give new hope of jobs and prosperity to people in all parts of Iraq.

Adam Price: The Prime Minister's predecessor once referred to the blood price that would be necessary as a result of the war in Iraq. Given the huge scale of the human cost—the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi, British and American lives lost—can the Prime Minister in all conscience say that that was a price worth paying?

Gordon Brown: Making decisions about war is very difficult indeed, but this House considered all the factors involved, made its decision and then implemented that decision. I can also say to the hon. Gentleman that we should be proud that 100,000 troops in all have at one time or another given service in Iraq, and they have done their duty by the country. At one point, we had 46,000 troops in Iraq; we now have 4,000, and we are now bringing the number down as we finish our mission at the end of May. I believe that we should say to our troops that we are proud of what they have done.

Mark Durkan: The Prime Minister has made a number of announcements that are welcome today and that will be even more welcome when they happen. Obviously, we wish safety to those deployed in the meantime and in the future. Those of us in Northern Ireland parties have had some engagement with the budding parliamentarians of Iraq, and we wish them and their people well in the opportunities and challenges that they face, including coming to terms with the toll of their loss, not just over the past five and a half years, but before. Will the Prime Minister tell us to what extent the prospect of troop withdrawal has been ensured by regime change in America, and will he also acknowledge that many democrats in this country are still sincerely scandalised by a war that was waged on false premises, with dodgy legal advice given in this Chamber, and under false assumptions?

Gordon Brown: So that the hon. Gentleman understands the sequence of the decisions, let me remind him that last July I said, and the Defence Secretary said to the House, that we had four specific objectives that we wanted to achieve in Iraq and that once we had achieved them there would be a fundamental change of mission. These objectives included greater security by training the Iraqi forces, making the holding of local elections possible, and moves, which we are now taking and working on, to improve the economic development of Iraq, so that people have a stake in the future. It is on the basis of these objectives that we now make our decision that our mission will end by 31 May next year at the latest. I believe that we have followed through the tasks that we set last July in a way that shows that there has been real progress, and that is why I hope that the hon. Gentleman agrees that the motive for today's decision is that we have completed the tasks we set.

Patrick Mercer: I am sure the Prime Minister will agree that despite the large number of American troops left in the Basra area, the withdrawal of British troops will create a power vacuum. Will he outline the contingency plans for the re-engagement of British troops? That assumes, of course, that the extra numbers relieved from there have not been sent to Afghanistan.

Gordon Brown: We have moved on from our previous operation, where we had combat troops on the ground every day in the front line in Basra and the surrounding areas. We have moved from that position of combat to one of overwatch over the past year. We have moved successfully to that position, and the number of incidents taking place in Basra has, of course, been cut very substantially since the operation that was also organised by Prime Minister al-Maliki took place in Iraq. There has been a very big reduction in violence. I am satisfied that the Iraqi troops are in a position to keep order themselves, but, of course, this is now a matter for the Iraqis. The agreement says that the relevant Iraqi Minister could come back to us to ask for further assistance, if he chooses to do so, and that is a matter for him. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will agree that whereas a year ago the situation in Basra was full of violence and incidents against British troops took place almost every day, we now have a situation where there is at least a minimum amount of security and Iraqi forces can take charge of the job themselves. That is what we hope to continue in the future.

Kerry McCarthy: I welcome today's announcement and the confirmation that we will continue to play a role in Iraqi life, particularly in economic development and promoting democracy. Will the Prime Minister assure us that the role of women in Iraqi society will be a central theme of our work there, particularly access to educational opportunities, involvement in economic life and representation in parliamentary democracy?

Gordon Brown: My hon. Friend is right to raise that question. We have continued to discuss with the Iraqis the position and representation of women in national life in Iraq. I think she will agree that the best guarantee of the future representation and freedom of women in Iraq is the strongest possible democracy in Iraq.

Robert Key: When Her Majesty's forces return home, will the Prime Minister ensure that each and every one of our servicemen and women is made aware of the support services available to them both when they get home and for the rest of their lives, and of the fact that they have won the right to priority treatment in the national health service? Will he ensure that the Secretary of State for Health issues a circular making it clear that it is Government policy that for the rest of their lives servicemen and women have priority?

Gordon Brown: I am glad that the hon. Gentleman has allowed me to mention the paper that was produced by the Defence Secretary on the range of services that should be available to servicemen and women and ex-servicemen and women. Those were set out in the paper that we published a few months ago. Such services include: better access to education—for example, the chance for someone to study once they have left one of the armed forces; better access to doctors and to health services, particularly for people who have to move between different areas of the country and often find themselves relegated down the list; and better help for people who have problems that have to be dealt with after a long period of service. I assure the hon. Gentleman that the Defence Secretary is putting more money into this service, and particularly so when a large number of people will be coming home, finally, from Iraq.

Andy Reed: I congratulate the Prime Minister and welcome today's statement. As he knows, I did not agree with our going to war in the first place, but I must admit that a great deal of progress has been made and that it would have been wrong to withdraw our troops in view of the initial problems. I particularly welcome the progress that has been made, but he must acknowledge that regime change was not one of the options on the table as we went to war in 2003. I agree that this is a mature time, when we must learn the lessons, and I am sure that the Prime Minister knows there is a danger of the same sort of thing happening in Afghanistan. Will he reassure me and the House that things have been carefully thought through, so that we have an exit strategy from Afghanistan and we will not be spending the next few decades trying to sort out that problem, too?

Gordon Brown: My hon. Friend has raised the question of Afghanistan, which involves one major difference: a 41-nation coalition is involved in Afghanistan and is committed to the success of Afghan democracy. We are reviewing what we can do together to make for better outcomes in Iraq. What I am certain of is that we must complement the military strategy in Afghanistan with what we can do to train up Afghan army and police forces to bring economic development to those areas that are dependent on narcotics when they could be dependent on other crops and other farming ways of life and to build up the local institutions, working with the tribes and an efficient central Government in Afghanistan. The nature of that new strategy will also have to take into account the relationship between Afghanistan and Pakistan, so that we can stop the flow of terrorists from one country to another.

Sammy Wilson: I, too, pay tribute to the many who served their country in Iraq and to those who died doing so. I pay particular tribute to the hundreds from Northern Ireland who served in the Royal Irish Regiment and other regiments during the past six years. On a recent visit to Basra, I was particularly impressed by how professional, proud and passionate those who are serving there are about the role that we are playing. Much work still needs to be done to train the police, to secure the area against destabilisation by insurgents from Iran, to build the infrastructure in the poorer areas of Basra and to protect minorities, especially the Christians. Will the Prime Minister tell us what plans have been put in place to ensure that the outstanding tasks are completed and not left undone?

Gordon Brown: I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman was able to visit our troops in Iraq, and, in particular, in the Basra area; they will be pleased to hear what he has said. He pays a particular tribute to the troops from Northern Ireland, as I do. They are very much part of the exercise in Iraq, and I met some of them yesterday. I agree with him that the social conditions in Basra have to improve, which is why, for example, we have built two water towers in the poorest areas, and why we are continuing to contribute to the building of schools and hospitals, as well as to the provision of jobs. He talks about the police forces. Yesterday, I met the policemen who have come from Britain to help train the police forces in Iraq—they are, and feel that they are, making a difference. The important message that we should send our troops in Iraq this Christmas is that they are making a difference—they are making real improvements to the lives of Iraqi citizens. Whatever differences there were over the causes and outbreak of the Iraqi war, it is important to recognise that all our troops have made a significant difference to this civilisation of Iraq.

Harry Cohen: Will the Prime Minister confirm that more Labour MPs than Liberal ones voted against the war? Given that more than 1 million Iraqis have died, that there are 4.7 million refugees, that there is mass unemployment and that their economy has been devastated and replaced by one that has been privatised and put in the control of overseas corporations, will the Prime Minister give an honest assessment of why the occupation failed to win the hearts and minds of the majority of Iraqis?

Gordon Brown: If my hon. Friend were to visit today, he would see a different picture from the one that he describes. Yesterday, I was at the port of Basra, which had been completely unable to function under Saddam Hussein—it was unable to have any trade successfully going through it and wrecks in the port made it impossible for other ships to enter. As a result of British and other action, that situation has been changed and the port is now in a position to be a thriving port for the future. People will then get jobs and that will enable them to build their livelihoods, international trade will form around Basra, and, of course, given its history of oil production—five sixths of Iraq's oil is produced in the south—Basra will be able to be a very prosperous place in the future. I do not think that anybody can tell us that the individual population of Iraq benefited from Saddam Hussein's reign.

Keith Simpson: The Prime Minister just alluded to the fact that the Americans, with some assistance from us, are reassessing the campaign in Afghanistan from top to bottom. I urge him to think again about initiating an inquiry into lessons from Iraq. There are obvious historical precedents—for example, the Mesopotamia inquiry in the first world war, which helped the conclusion of the campaign in 1917-18. The Americans are very open about this, so why aren't we?

Gordon Brown: I think that the hon. Gentleman is conflating Iraq and Afghanistan in a way that, on reflection, he would not wish to do. The Afghanistan war is being fought by a coalition of 41. There is a review taking place of how we can best detach the Taliban from the people of Afghanistan. That is a totally different position from where we are in Iraq, and he should recognise that. We have put more troops into Afghanistan because of the danger of the guerrilla warfare being managed by the Taliban, and we continue to look at that particular problem. Generally, our strategy in Afghanistan is to complement our military action with measures that will increase the Afghans' ability to run their own country. The review in Afghanistan is completely different from what he is talking about in Iraq.

John Barrett: The Prime Minister has never detailed what the Government believe to be the number of civilian deaths in Iraq. Much work has been done on that, and the lower estimates are around 100,000. If the Prime Minister cannot give details today of his estimate, will he confirm that the Government will do some work on it, so that we can know the answer to the question?

Gordon Brown: It is not a matter for the British Government: it is for the Iraqi Government to examine what has happened in their country. Only they will be in the position to obtain the full information. I cannot see how from here or from just Basra the British Government could conduct such a survey. However, I acknowledge the loss of life and the suffering of the Iraqi people, and British forces are trying to improve the Iraqi people's conditions of life and standard of living.

Business of the House

Harriet Harman: With permission, I shall make a statement about the business for the week commencing 12 January:
	Monday 12 January—Second Reading of the Business Rate Supplements Bill.
	Tuesday 13 January—Second Reading of the Saving Gateway Accounts Bill.
	Wednesday 14 January—General debate on Iraq: future strategic relationship.
	Thursday 15 January—Topical debate: subject to be announced, followed by a general debate on armed forces personnel.
	The provisional business for the week commencing 19 January will include:
	Monday 19 January—Second Reading of the Policing and Crime Bill.
	Tuesday 20 January—Motion to approve European documents relating to a European framework for action and European economic recovery plan, followed by a motion to approve European documents relating to financial management, followed by a motion to approve European documents relating to EU-Russia Relations.
	Wednesday 21 January—Opposition Day [1st Allotted Day]. There will be a debate on an Opposition motion, subject to be announced.
	Thursday 22 January—Topical debate: subject to be announced, followed by a general debate, subject to be announced.
	Through you, Mr. Speaker, may I also offer my best wishes for Christmas and the new year to all hon. Members and, on behalf of all hon. Members, may I offer all our best wishes for Christmas and the new year to the Clerks of the House, the Officers of the House, the catering team, the cleaners, the police, the Doorkeepers and all who keep the House running smoothly? Everyone deserves a good Christmas.

Theresa May: I thank the Leader of the House for her statement. She is here fresh from her performance at Prime Minister's questions yesterday. As this is the season of good will, I thought that it might be helpful if I were to point out a few mistakes that she made. First, she said that the Conservative party
	"opposed our action to recapitalise the banks."—[ Official Report, 17 December 2008; Vol. 485, c. 1090.]
	As my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) pointed out, that is categorically not the case.
	Secondly, the Leader of the House claimed, in column 1095, that we opposed the right to request flexible working for parents with children under six, but the official record of the debates on flexible working shows that my hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond) said from the Front Bench:
	"I would like to place on the record my support for flexible working." ——[ Official Report, Employment Public Bill Committee, 24 January 2002; c. 602.]
	The right hon. and learned Lady's third error was to claim that the Conservative national loan guarantee scheme
	"is not a guarantee of anything to anybody." —[ Official Report, 17 December 2008; Vol. 485, c. 1090.]
	Well, that is a different view to that taken by the Federation of Small Businesses, which said that it
	"welcomes plans by the Conservative Party to guarantee billions of pounds worth of business lending through this tough credit climate."
	I am sure that the Leader of the House, not wishing inadvertently to mislead anyone, will be keen to correct the  Hansard record on these points as soon as possible.
	The Leader of the House has confirmed that on 17 January there will be a general debate on armed forces personnel. Last week, when I asked why the Defence Secretary had not made an oral statement on the delay in the procurement of two aircraft carriers, the Leader of the House said:
	"There will be a debate on that in the week in which we return from the recess."—[ Official Report, 11 December 2008; Vol. 485, c. 677.]
	It would normally be out of order to discuss procurement in a debate on personnel so will she now change the title of that debate to include procurement?
	Yesterday, on a point of order, my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Mr. Steen) said he had learned that the Government were set to ratify the Council of Europe convention against human trafficking. No statement has been made to the House and he was not informed, although he is chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on trafficking. Can the Leader of the House confirm whether the convention has now been ratified and explain why that welcome news was not given in a statement to the House?
	Last week, I raised the fact that the Housing Minister had cancelled provisions allowing sellers to put their homes on the market before a home information pack had been completed. Yet days after she condemned home owners for exploiting that loophole, her own Department did exactly that when advertising the ex-Home Secretary's former grace and favour home. If the Government are going to insist on measures that will do nothing to help our ailing housing market, they should at least have the decency to adhere to them themselves. May we have a debate on double standards in Government?
	Finally, as this will be a difficult Christmas for many families as they tighten their purse strings, they must be galled to see the Government wasting taxpayers' money. The Department for Transport introduced an efficiency programme that was supposed to save £57 million but has cost £81million. The Ministry of Justice has spent £130 million on refurbishing an old office block, at a cost of £915 per square metre—18 times more than a standard refurbishment. I can only assume the current Lord Chancellor has been taking design advice from Lord Irvine of Lairg. Finally, we hear that the taxpayer is paying for training for the Culture Secretary to improve his public speaking, for the Home Secretary to boost her confidence and for Lord Mandelson to learn how to use a BlackBerry. I suppose that he is more used to issuing instructions than to taking them. May we have a debate on Government profligacy?
	I jumped the gun somewhat last week, but as this is definitely the last business questions before Christmas, may I take this opportunity to wish you, Mr. Speaker, and all the Officers and staff of the House and all right hon. and hon. Members a very happy Christmas and new year?

Harriet Harman: The right hon. Lady is right this time as this is the last business questions before Christmas, although she is still lacking somewhat in Christmas spirit. She made several points about what I said yesterday. If she wants to challenge what I say at Prime Minister's questions, she should make her party let her do them. When the Prime Minister is not available for questions, she should stand in for the Opposition, instead of being left to answer the questions on Thursday. As it is panto season, let me say that at least I got to play the principal boy yesterday. Like Cinderella, she had to sit in the shadows.
	The right hon. Lady suggested that we have debates on double standards in Government and Government profligacy. They sound more like Opposition day debates than Government debates and I suggest that she choose them. She also suggested that we broaden the terms of the debate on armed services personnel. I said last time that procurement issues are vital for armed services personnel, but I will consider her request.
	The right hon. Lady asked about human trafficking, and I will write to her and set out all the work that is being done across Government on that issue. What is really important is what is done in the voluntary sector, to tackle advertisements in newspapers, by the police, by the prosecution service and by the courts. A wide range of work is being done on the issue and I shall write to her with the details. I thank her for her support on that issue.

Simon Hughes: May I start by associating myself and my colleagues with the wishes expressed through you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to Mr. Speaker and to you and your colleagues and all the staff of the House for the coming Christmas?
	On a sober note, I know that I reflect the views of the House when I say that our thoughts are not only with the families of the servicemen and women who have died in this last year. In London in particular, we have had a year when far too many young people have died from knife and gun crime or have suffered other violent deaths. Our thoughts are with their families, too. We realise that they will have a very difficult Christmas, but I hope that they will have the support of the communities in which they live and that they will continue to get that support.
	I thought that the Leader of the House did rather well yesterday, and I was not going to make any rude comments about her. I will therefore associate myself with only one little request that was made by the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May), which is that the debate on defence in the new year should be on the wider subject of personnel and procurement. That is the only way in which to ensure that we have a debate that covers not only the commissioning of aircraft carriers and the rest, which is a matter of huge interest, but the wider matters of training and the whole set of armed forces and defence issues that will arise in the new year.
	In the past six months, we have been told that 320,000 people have lost their jobs. The latest unemployment figures show that 1.86 million people are now out of work and there are further announcements to come. For example, Woolworths has announced that 26,000 people are likely to be out of work in the first part of the new year. On 3 October, the Prime Minister announced the setting up of the National Economic Council. Rather than frustrating requests and Government responses on the subject of when we are going to have debates about the economic difficulties that the nation is in, may I suggest that in the new year the Prime Minister or the Chancellor should come to the House every month to make a statement on the reports or activities of the National Economic Council and that we should have monthly debates on the state of the British economy? Sadly, the economy will be the top issue in people's concerns for the whole of next year. Will the Leader of the House reflect on a proper way of managing the reporting back of the Government's responses to the economic crisis?
	I know that yesterday there was a short Adjournment debate on the Israeli settlements in Palestine, but at this time of year, above all, thoughts in this country and around the world turn to the Holy Land. Can one of the slots that are not yet filled in the first couple of weeks in the new year be given to a debate on the Government's efforts and international efforts to ensure that there is freedom of movement around Palestine for Palestinians of all faiths—Muslims, Christians and those who hold other beliefs—not just at Christmas and Eid but all year round? People in that part of the world cannot travel freely, whether they want to travel for faith or family reasons, for study or for work. Until that freedom of movement is given to people in the Holy Land, there cannot be any hope for peace and progress.
	Nearer to home, the Leader of the House knows that our borough and three neighbouring boroughs are being asked to pick up the £4 million tab for the de Menezes inquest. Questions have been asked of her colleagues about that matter in the House. Can we have a debate early in the new year, before she introduces the planned police and coroners Bill, to ensure that we can sort out the issue? Inquests of London or national importance should not just be the financial responsibility of one or four local authorities and the cost should be shared much more fairly.
	Lastly, let me return to an issue that I often come back to. The Leader of the House has announced three Government Bills to be debated in the first few weeks of the new year. Yesterday, in the Consolidated Fund Bill, we agreed without debate the allocation of £32 billion of additional public money for this financial year and £194 billion for the next financial year. May I suggest a new year's resolution to the Leader of the House on behalf of the Government? Can we have a year in which we see much more progress in handing power from the Government to Parliament? That would mean that Bills introduced by the Government would have adequate time for debate and amendment by colleagues from all parties on Report and that we could have a proper way of holding the Government to account not just for the taxes they raise but for the money they spend—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman has well exceeded the normal ration of time that is allocated to him at this point. I hope that he has now made his points, and the Leader of the House can answer him.

Harriet Harman: The hon. Gentleman asked about the financial implications of the de Menezes inquest. When a particularly expensive inquest falls on one area, arrangements and adjustments are made. For example, extra resources were available for the coroner service in Oxfordshire because of the returning military who arrived at the airport there. Arrangements are made to adjust resources and that will have been the case in relation to the de Menezes inquest.
	The hon. Gentleman followed up the point made by the shadow Leader of the House about the defence debate. As he will know, there are set piece defence debates throughout the year. One is always on personnel, one is on defence in the world and one deals with procurement. Generally speaking, without wanting to trespass on the discretion of the Chair, it is possible to raise issues that cross the boundaries in those general debates in quite a substantial way. Procurement issues are very important to the operational ability of our armed services personnel and I am sure that hon. Members who want to raise questions of procurement will be able to do so and will get a response from the Minister in the debate when we return in January.
	The hon. Gentleman mentioned the question of accountability to the House for the work of the Government in tackling the global economic crisis. There are, of course, Treasury questions and there have been numerous statements. We want to be sure that at all times the House is kept up to date with information and that there is also a chance to question Ministers. Since the economic crisis hit towards the end of this year, that has happened more regularly than just every month and we expect that to continue to be the case. The economy is a No. 1 priority for the Government and we know that it is a No. 1 priority for the House. We do not expect the House not to have the opportunity to hold the Government to account and to debate economic issues in the future.
	The hon. Gentleman raised the question of the middle east. Without expecting the terms of reference of the debate to go too broadly, there will be an opportunity to raise the question of the middle east in the debate on Iraq and related strategic issues.
	The hon. Gentleman also mentioned job losses and the National Economic Council. Let me take this opportunity to say that the Government have the utmost concern for those who are faced with losing their jobs at Woolworths. Every possible arrangement will be made to help them to ensure that they can get another job as quickly as possible as soon as they lose their job at Woolworths.

Several hon. Members: rose —

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I should mention to the House that since Mr. Speaker placed a 15-minute time limit on speeches in the Christmas Adjournment debate, the number of hon. Members wishing to contribute has swollen considerably, so we may be struggling for time later. I hope, therefore, in a festive spirit, that it will be understood if I adopt a Scrooge-like attitude to the length of supplementary questions now.

John McDonnell: In the spirit of Christmas I refer to the fact that the Secretary of State for Transport decided to defer the decision on the expansion of Heathrow until January. My right hon. and learned Friend may have seen this morning that in early-day motion 339 more than 100 Members from all parties are now calling for a vote on that matter on the Floor of the House of Commons.
	 [That this House notes the Government's commitment given in the 2003 Aviation White Paper, The Future of Air Transport to reduce noise impacts and to ensure that air quality and environmental standards are met before proceeding with a third runway at Heathrow Airport; further notes the assurance given by the Prime Minister on 12 November 2008 that support for a third runway at Heathrow is subject to strict environmental conditions; further notes that Heathrow Airport is already in breach of the European Air Quality Directive to be implemented by 2010; welcomes the statement by the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs that these environmental commitments should be honoured; supports the Chairman of the  Environment Agency' s decision to oppose the third runway on environmental grounds; and calls upon the Government not to proceed with the third Heathrow runway or mixed-mode and to put the matter to a vote on the floor of the House. ]
	All we want for Christmas is a vote. Will she pass that on to her right hon. Friend the Secretary of State?

Harriet Harman: The Secretary of State for Transport will make his decision on Heathrow known in the new year.

Alistair Burt: May I draw the Leader of the House's attention to the growing number of written answers in  Hansard that are only partially answered by the Minister, although they are accepted by the Department, with the rest of the information to be conveyed by private letter to the Member? In some cases, valuable information could be gained from those letters. Would it be possible to consider that more of them might be placed in the Library so there might be greater access to them—

Bernard Jenkin: Or in  Hansard.

Alistair Burt: Or they could be published in  Hansard, rather than simply being kept private.

Harriet Harman: I agree that as much as possible should be put in  Hansard. A Minister being held to account for an answer is not a private matter: that is public information, and I shall set my deputy on to it.

Anne Moffat: May I wish a merry Christmas and a good new year to all?
	When we in Britain talk about every child mattering we must not forget about children abroad, especially at this time of year. I hope that my right hon. and learned Friend will forgive me for labouring the point, but I want to ask once again for a debate about the so-called "witch" children in Nigeria. They are being killed, buried alive and tortured and, if their parents cannot afford to hire someone to exorcise them, they get taken away and we do not know what happens to them. The programme "Dispatches"—

Simon Burns: Give way!

Anne Moffat: Sorry?

Simon Burns: Give way!

Anne Moffat: Give way?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I really did not need that help, but the point is— [ Interruption. ] Order. The hon. Lady is exceeding her ration. Can she please bring her question to a swift end?

Anne Moffat: Please may we have a debate on that in the new year?

Harriet Harman: I will look into the possibilities of having a debate on the important issues that my hon. Friend raises.

Philip Davies: May we have a debate on the Equality and Human Rights Commission? A recent answer to a parliamentary question that I tabled showed that, on average, the commission pays men more than women, white people more than those from ethnic minorities, and non-disabled people more than disabled people. What on earth is the point of a politically correct organisation—it is given huge quantities of taxpayer's money to give lectures around the country on equal pay —that does not even practise what it preaches?

Harriet Harman: The hon. Gentleman shows how important it is to have transparency. We must ensure that all organisations publish information about pay gaps between genders and ethnicities, and about how many disabled people they employ. That is not just important for the EHRC, because we need that transparency in the whole public sector—and in the private sector too.

Rob Marris: We spend a lot of time in this House passing legislation to sort out previous legislation that has not worked out. Given that this will be the shortest parliamentary Session for many years—and that the Queen's Speech was also the shortest for many years—may we please have two days devoted to the Report stage of Bills more frequently?

Harriet Harman: I know that there is a long-standing concern that we should have enough time to debate issues on Report. We always look to do that, and I hope that my hon. Friend will support the post-legislative scrutiny arrangements that we are introducing. They will enable us to look back and make sure that legislation does the job that we thought that it would. Also, he does not know yet that this will be the shortest Session ever, as we have not yet determined when it will end.

Tobias Ellwood: Will the Leader of the House consider introducing an annual debate on tourism? It is our fifth biggest industry, worth £90 billion a year and the fact that the Olympics are coming to the UK gives us a great opportunity to harness its potential, in London and elsewhere.

Harriet Harman: That is something that can be debated when we consider the report of the relevant Select Committee.

Jim Sheridan: Can we have a debate on double standards in public life? My right hon. and learned Friend may be aware of recent reports that senior managers in BBC Scotland shared a bonus of £100,000, while other workers lost their jobs. The trade unions wanted to know who had received the bonus, but they were refused that information on the grounds that it would cause distress to those concerned. Given that the BBC is obsessed with this House and hon. Members' expenses and salaries, does she agree that that smacks of double standards?

Harriet Harman: I think that that is something for which the BBC ought to be responsible to licence payers, and perhaps the trade unions should refer their request to the relevant organisation.

David Heath: May we have an urgent debate early in the new year on job losses in the retail sector? The Leader of the House has mentioned that already, but we already have a well-established way of at least helping to mitigate major job losses in the manufacturing sector. When a manufacturing company closes down, a taskforce involving local authorities and Jobcentre Plus, among others, will be sent in, but we do not have a similar mechanism for large retailers with small numbers of employees spread across the country. Can we see whether we can establish a mechanism that will provide similar support for people who sadly lose their jobs in the retail sector, such as has happened with the closure of Woolworths?

Harriet Harman: The hon. Gentleman makes a very good proposal and it is one that we are considering. Even though the many thousands of job losses involved in the closure of Woolworths are not concentrated in one geographical area, we need something akin to the taskforce approach to make sure that the help that we bring to bear is working.

Mark Durkan: The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland has issued a short written statement today to the effect that the Prime Minister has received Sir Peter Gibson's review of the intelligence material about the Omagh bombing that was available to the security and intelligence agencies. It suggests that a statement will be made to the House when the Government have completed their consideration of the review. How long will that consideration take, when will the statement be made, and will it be an oral statement with the opportunity for appropriate questions?

Harriet Harman: I am making the assumption that it will be an oral statement, but I cannot give the timing. I shall ask the Secretary of State to have a word with the hon. Gentleman and give him a rough idea of when he can expect it. After Equitable Life, I am a bit reluctant to give any firm commitment from the Dispatch Box.

Philip Hollobone: Unemployment in north Northamptonshire has risen by 50 per cent. in the past 12 months. There are now 5,300 people without work, compared with 4,000 in 1997. With unemployment set to be the dominant political issue of 2009, may we have an debate on the Floor of the House early in the new year so that we can discuss an issue that is going to affect so many millions of our citizens?

Harriet Harman: We have had a statement on tackling unemployment in the past week or so, and I have no doubt that we will return to the issue in January, when we will discuss the action that the Government are taking to prevent unemployment and to help support people who lose their jobs back into work.

Tom Levitt: Will my right hon. and learned Friend pass on my sincere and profound thanks to the Home Secretary for her decision to look again at ways of making local policing more accountable to those being policed? Will she ensure that hon. Members have the maximum opportunity to propose and explore different models of good practice in effective and accountable community policing at street, estate and ward levels? I do not expect that process to be finished by the 19 January Second Reading of the Policing and Crime Bill, but perhaps it is not necessary to have a rigid model that is applicable all over the country.

Harriet Harman: I thank my hon. Friend for his welcome for the provisions in that Bill, and it is very important that we have proper accountability to the local community at all levels of the police. I am sure that he will see something to that effect in the Bill.

Simon Burns: If the Leader of the House had been at Treasury questions, she would have heard the Economic Secretary, in front of the Prime Minister, apologise fulsomely but rather tactfully to him and to hon. Members for the Government's failure to produce a statement on Equitable Life before the House rose for the Christmas recess. The right hon. and learned Lady assured the House that we would have a statement in the autumn, but January 2009 is not the autumn. Will she therefore be kind enough to follow suit and apologise to the House for her statement?

Harriet Harman: I am sorry that the statement was not available when I said that it would be, but it was not complete. My announcement to the House was contingent on the statement being finished. The point that I want to make is that it is not as though it is complete and the Government are sitting on it. As I said at the last business questions, the Treasury is dotting the i's and crossing the t's and the statement will be brought to the House as soon as it is ready. We are very well aware of the importance of this issue.

Douglas Hogg: Can we have a debate early in the year entitled "The Counter-productive Nature of Government Policy"? That would enable us to point out that it is bizarre of the Government to charge banks 12 per cent. interest on the recapitalisation fund, and at the same time expect them to charge their customers only 1 or 2 per cent. Also, it is very bizarre that representatives from Jaguar Land Rover should be seeing the Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform at a time when one of that industry's real burdens are the differential costs imposed by Government on 4x4 vehicles—one of which, incidentally, I have.

Harriet Harman: The right hon. and learned Gentleman should direct his suggestion for a debate on the counter-productive nature of Government policy to his colleagues. I think that he is suggesting an Opposition day debate rather than a Government debate. He raises the point that the Leader of the Opposition raised about the 12 per cent. and the 6 per cent. The rate at which banks lend out is not just the rate at which they borrow; there is also the question of deposits. Therefore, the rate at which banks borrow and those at which they lend are never the same. So the Leader of the Opposition made a bogus argument, and it is a shame that the right hon. and learned Gentleman has repeated it.

Paul Burstow: May I draw the attention of the Leader of the House to early-day motion 215?
	 [ That this House notes the findings by the Parliamentary Ombudsman of 10 counts of maladministration by Government Departments in relation to Equitable Life; exp resses concern at the Government' s fai lure to respond to the Ombudsman' s report within its own specified timescale; notes with concern that over 30,000 Equitable Life policyholders have died without seeing their situa tion resolved since the society' s near-collapse in 2000; and calls on the Government to give a public response without delay to the Parliamentary Ombudsman' s recommendations and set out a timetable for action. ]
	Other hon. Members have referred to that subject today.
	On behalf of my constituents David Peters, Thomas Higgs, Kathleen Davies, Janice King, Vivien Knell and 30 others who have been in touch with me in the past few years, may I ask the Leader of the House when we can expect the statement and, more importantly for my constituents and thousands of others around the country, when they can expect the compensation that is long overdue?

Harriet Harman: An oral statement will be made as soon as the Equitable Life statement is ready.

Andrew Murrison: The Leader of the House will be keen to ensure that our debates in this place are as well informed as possible. She will therefore be alarmed to find that the Ministry of Defence is increasingly reluctant to sponsor visits to Iraq and Afghanistan. For example, my planned visit this Christmas has been turned down. Will she impress on her defence colleagues the importance of such visits in informing right hon. and hon. Members of what is going on in theatre and ensure that, unless there is good reason for visits not to take place, they do occur so that we can better conduct the business of the House?

Harriet Harman: These visits are important, as is the armed forces parliamentary scheme, and I will raise the hon. Gentleman's point with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence.

Julian Brazier: The Leader of the House kindly last week promised to chase up her colleagues on the mounting confusion over the rerating of businesses in ports. Since then, we had a large meeting of Members of Parliament, many of them her colleagues, downstairs on Monday. We have also had the comments made by the right hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Jane Kennedy) that when she was the Treasury Minister responsible for the Valuation Office Agency, it did not tell her about this developing muddle. Businesses are on the verge of going to the wall. Please will the Leader of the House chase this one up?

Harriet Harman: I will. I do not think it is a muddle; it is a complex situation that needs to be sorted out.

Bernard Jenkin: Will the Leader of the House give the House a categorical assurance that neither she nor any Minister, civil servant or adviser sought to influence the contents of Mr. Speaker's statement that was delivered on the day of the state opening?

Harriet Harman: I can give the hon. Gentleman an absolute categorical assurance that I made no attempt to influence the Speaker's statement. I think that, had I done so, I would have got a quick, dusty answer.

Roger Williams: Following on from the Prime Minister's statement on Iraq, hon. Members will be aware from their constituencies that, due to improved medical services at the front line, armed forces personnel are returning from Iraq with serious injuries that might have caused their death in previous conflicts. Some of the people returning are suffering from mental illnesses that might stay with them for the rest of their life.
	The public support these people very generously through charities such as the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Families Association and Combat Stress. The Leader of the House said that she would extend the terms of the debate on military personnel to include procurement and middle east relationships.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. May we have a question?

Roger Williams: I hope that the debate will not rule out support for veterans. If it does, may we have a debate later so that we can concentrate on that issue?

Harriet Harman: The important issue of supporting those who return with injuries will be four-square within the terms of the debate on Thursday 15 January on armed forces personnel.

Tim Loughton: May we have an urgent debate on child protection and the future of the social work profession, perhaps on one of the allocated topical debate days? It is now more than five weeks since the baby P court case. Numerous reviews have been ordered and statements made, mostly outside the House, and the issue remains in the headlines and is of great concern to many of our constituents. May we please have the opportunity to air the subject fully to gauge the Government's latest thinking? There is great distress and confusion in local authorities, not least among social workers. They feel put upon and demoralised, and we need to give them some words of encouragement about the way forward as well as about the future of vulnerable children, of whom there are still too many.

Harriet Harman: I understand the sentiment behind the hon. Gentleman's question. Hon. Members of all parties are concerned about child protection. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families made a statement to the House, in which he said that he had set up the Laming review. No doubt when he has received that review and been able to respond to it, there will be a further statement. I am sure that the issues will continue to be discussed in the House next year.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I am grateful to hon. Members and the Leader of the House for the speed with which we have been able to dispatch that business.

BILL PRESENTED

Policing and Crime Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
	Secretary Jacqui Smith, supported by the Prime Minister, Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Secretary Straw, Mr. Secretary Johnson, Mr Secretary Hoon, Mr. Secretary Balls, Mr. Secretary Burnham, Mr. Jim Fitzpatrick and Mr. Vernon Coaker presented a Bill to make provision about the police; to make provision about prostitution, sex offenders, sex establishments and certain other premises; to make provision for reducing and dealing with the abuse of alcohol; to make provision about the proceeds of crime; to make provision about extradition; to amend the Aviation Security Act 1982; to make provision about criminal records and to amend the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006; to confer, extend or facilitate search, forfeiture and other powers relating to the United Kingdom's borders or elsewhere; to make further provision for combating crime and disorder; to repeal redundant provisions; and for connected purposes.
	 Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Monday 12 January, and to be printed (Bill 7 ) with explanatory notes (Bill 7- EN).

Christmas Adjournment

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—( Chris Mole.)

Meg Munn: I am delighted to take this opportunity to speak in the recess Adjournment debate. I intend to deal with the issue that was just raised by the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), who speaks for the Opposition on children's issues, but is no longer in his place. I want to talk about child protection, the tragic death of baby P and other child abuse cases. How could this have possibly happened?
	Today I do not want to concentrate on individual cases but to talk more generally about the issues and concerns. The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham was right to say that the issue goes very wide and is enormously important. There are a great many aspects to the issue and I am sure that in the time available I will not be able to do justice to all of them, but I want to take this opportunity to debate some of the complexities in more detail.
	Before I was elected to this place, I was employed in social work for almost 20 years and spent a great deal of that time on child protection, ending up as the assistant director of children's services in York. We must all be concerned that previous reviews of child protection failures have identified the same or similar mistakes on the part of the professionals involved, whether social workers, health workers, teachers or police officers. We have to ask why the lessons that were identified so many times have not become part of the standard operating procedure in child protection cases.
	We also need to understand in much more detail the pressures that make it difficult for even the best and highly competent social workers to operate effectively. What do we ask when we look at child protection? What decisions do we ask front-line workers from across agencies to make?
	We know that children thrive best when all their needs are met, whether emotional or physical, so removing a child temporarily or permanently from their birth family is an extremely serious step. It brings into question the fundamental rights of families to enjoy family life as they choose. It also has a drastic effect on the child's emotional well-being.
	Research into adoption tells us that all adopted children and, indeed, adults have to address for themselves why they were adopted. Even those who were given up freely by their birth parents can suffer feelings of rejection and damaged self-esteem. Those children who are removed from their parents, go through the care system and are placed with permanent adoptive families often have significant problems. Social workers thus have to assess the risk to children—the risk of significant harm if the child stays with its own family, but also the risks of removal and placement with another family.
	Of course we see children who are removed from home for a short while and placed with foster parents while social workers work to improve the abilities of the family to care for the child. They may look at the fundamental issues of how they care for the child—parenting skills—but they may also address the drug and alcohol dependency issues which, if they were not there, would mean that the parents could care for their own child or children. There may be a trialled return home, which we hope succeeds. If it does not, there may be a further period in care and the child may ultimately be placed for adoption. Throughout the process, extremely difficult questions are involved in weighing up whether it is better to get the child back home with its family or to find it an alternative family for life. There are emotional implications for children and their security, but when a child's birth family has complex problems there are no easy answers.
	What is good enough parenting? When is it right to take the drastic step of finding an alternative family for a child? In cases such as that of baby P where there is horrendous abuse, we quickly come to the judgment that the point has long since been passed when that decision should have been made. In many situations, however, the decision is not easy.
	For social workers, the burden is not just that they are in a situation where they have to try to make the best decision about a child's future; our social services are overworked and poorly resourced, which makes things more difficult. A problem may not be identified because the social worker has too many cases and does not have time to assess the situation properly, so mistakes are made. I have been looking at some of the social work blogs, which are a way of finding out what people are thinking that was not possible a few years ago. Social workers say that they go to bed worrying about the children they are responsible for, because they do not have time to do all the tasks they should undertake. I remember that feeling well.
	With some families, social workers are taking significant personal risks. I remember social workers visiting a house and finding firearms. It is not unusual for social workers to be threatened, but even in those circumstances they have to continue to try to focus on the child and make the best decision. They may come across new challenges that were not so prevalent when they trained. When I started in social work, drug abuse was uncommon, but now it is a regular feature of the difficulties families face.
	Is it possible to prevent child deaths? Yes, but not all of them. There will always be cases that could not have been foreseen. We must recognise the element of risk, which inevitably means that sometimes things will go wrong despite the best efforts of all concerned.

Philip Davies: Does the hon. Lady agree that a key way of ensuring that problems do not happen again, whether they relate to social services or even the probation service, is to make public the internal inquiries that take place after something has gone horribly wrong? People could then see what went wrong and what is being put in place to ensure that it does not happen again.

Meg Munn: As the hon. Gentleman knows, that is a difficult question because there are confidentiality issues for particular families. It is enormously important that such reviews are carried out properly and in a way that makes the circumstances public, but they must not become witch hunts for particular social workers. Furthermore, people must be able to learn from them and I have some suggestions about how we can do that better.
	Over the years there has been much structural change in child protection and a new approach to the needs of children through the Every Child Matters agenda, which focuses on organisations involved in providing services to children, sharing information and working together to protect children and young people from harm and to help them achieve what they want in life. Some of those changes have been profoundly helpful— for instance, by bringing the different professionals involved together more often and emphasising the need to share information. I was pleased that the Government recently announced a co-location fund to bring health, education and children's services together under one roof to facilitate those processes. From my experience, I know that when people get to know other professionals well and develop a daily working relationship with them, they are much more likely to be effective and to share information and achieve what they are trying to do.
	Of course, at the heart of the matter is a fundamental issue about knowledge and skills. There has been insufficient rigour in ensuring that all professionals involved in child protection learn the lessons from case reviews and inquiries. Case reviews are vital for all involved in child protection—everyone can learn more from studying past mistakes—but we also need robust and thorough inspection systems, both internal and external, to ensure that child care staff understand the risks and what is required to address them.
	We must demand higher and more rigorous standards of training, better continuous professional development and proper training for those who manage the child protection system. Compared with other professionals, such as doctors, teachers or nurses, social workers are few in number and their profession has not been given the same kind of attention as others. For years, the career structure has been debated to address how those with most experience can remain in front-line work. Some local authorities have done that more successfully than others, but too often the most experienced people are in management positions and not necessarily on the front line, where the skill, knowledge and experience needed to deal with difficult situations are sorely required. I therefore welcome the establishment by the Government of the social work taskforce. It will begin work in the new year and will address those and other issues.
	All front-line staff need managers who understand what is required, who check their work regularly and ensure that the right information is collected and that thorough assessments are made. We must not forget that such work puts a strain on the well-being of social work staff so we need to ensure that it does not overwhelm otherwise competent, dedicated and skilled staff. Day in, day out, dealing with difficult families and difficult circumstances is very demanding. Social workers rarely receive recognition when things go right, and the negative press about tragic cases has an impact on their morale and, ultimately, on people's desire to do that difficult and demanding work. We need to ensure that social workers are properly supported in their tasks and also properly remunerated.
	I shall touch briefly on paperwork, because there is a tendency to view the recording of information as bureaucratic and unnecessary. This is where I feel that the hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), who speaks for the Opposition on these matters, has got it wrong. I do not in any way feel that his intentions are bad—I too believe that we need to be vigilant about unnecessary bureaucracy—but accurate recording and robust management information are at the core of child protection. Indicators of likely future harm are best identified from past behaviour, so co-ordinating information and accurately recording visits and contacts, with proper analysis, are crucial. Supervision notes must be kept so that it is clear that social workers are receiving appropriate advice, and decisions must be recorded on files. That is essential for good practice and ensures that children have continuity of protection even in the absence of their allocated social worker or in the event that they move to a different authority. Many such families move around regularly and one of the danger points in child protection is when they move from one authority, which may have been working extremely hard with them, to another, which may not pick up the significance of various issues in the family.
	I have concentrated primarily on the role of social workers, but other professionals have a vital role to play and must be involved. Working together across professions to monitor children, using all the information about health, child development and education, is essential.
	I turn briefly to the prosecution of those who have harmed children. As we can see from the baby P case, we have moved forward. We saw the benefit of legislation that came in only a few years ago to ensure that everyone in a household could be held responsible for the death of a child even if it was impossible to identify who exactly had killed the child. However, I am concerned about the length of time that such cases take. It is obviously essential that nothing impedes legal processes and the conduct of a fair trial, but what about the children?
	The serious case review on baby P was produced 15 months after he was killed, at the end of the court case, so for 15 months issues in Haringey were not fully addressed. I urge the Government to consider how more speedy reviews can be undertaken and how action can be taken to address failings and improve services, without the need to wait until the end of a court case. If we do not do that, we are failing children.
	A number of people have called for a public inquiry into the case of baby P. Public inquiries are long, complicated and expensive. I believe it is unlikely that such an inquiry would uncover new lessons to learn, beyond those that previous inquiries have discovered or beyond that which the serious case review will uncover. So what would be the purpose of such a public inquiry at this point? The priority, in my view, needs to be to ensure that all those who work with children are properly trained and put that learning into practice.
	The Government have taken a number of steps to address child protection concerns, some of which I have already referred to. The management of children's services has rightly been raised. The Government propose that children's services directors should have both education and social work experience. I am concerned about how that will be achieved. Although experience of child protection matters can be gained by staff whose previous career was in education, I am not sure whether the depth of knowledge required can be achieved easily. The Government should consider making each local authority have a senior manager with the required experience designated as having overall responsibility for child protection issues. That may be the director, if suitably qualified, but if the director has not got that depth of experience, it should be a second-tier manager.
	The Department for Children, Schools and Families must ensure that it properly collates the lessons from all serious case reviews. My response to the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) is that bringing together information from reviews across the country is enormously important; in that way, we identify trends and understand the issues faced by social workers.
	Today, I received an answer to a parliamentary question about the number of children who have been the subject of serious case reviews who have died from ingesting methadone. I have had that concern for a number of years, having quite by chance discovered other local authorities, as well as the one in which I was working at the time, where that had happened. The Department does not know the answer. That is not good enough; it needs to collate the information to look at issues that are perhaps not being identified, so that social workers can do their jobs and policy and practice can respond. In addition, I believe it is fundamental that the Government ensure that research on good practice is disseminated, as well as that on failings, so that staff can learn from what works, as well as from what goes wrong.
	When child protection goes wrong, it can all too readily result in tragedy. The resulting press storm can leave onlookers with the impression that the whole child protection system is failing, which is not so. For the most part, children are protected and helped to have better lives.

Paul Burstow: First, I wish you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and other hon. Members the compliments of the season, but I fear that some of my remarks will not necessarily be fully within the compliments of good will to all men. [Hon. Members: "And women."] Indeed. I have started badly already.
	There are many reasons why I do not believe that the House should adjourn now. There are issues that we need to debate, and we need to be debating them now. There are also issues that mean that the House should not adjourn for as long as it plans to adjourn. Like many hon. Members on both sides of the House, I find it very hard to understand why the Government thought it necessary and sensible to extend the Christmas recess by a week. With many of our constituents facing the prospect of being without a job in 2009, it seems rather disrespectful of them for us not to be in the House doing our jobs.

David Howarth: May I draw my hon. Friend's attention to another, rather more immediate possibility? During the next three or four weeks, another bank might go down and the Government might want to intervene by making proposals to spend yet another £20 billion. Is it really compatible with our constitutional traditions that the Government could do that without the House's permission to spend that money?

Paul Burstow: Over the years, the House has undoubtedly ceded to the Government more and more of its former control over supply. As a consequence, there probably would be no need to recall Parliament, although it certainly should be recalled in such circumstances, as my hon. Friend rightly says. In fact, I want to come on to the economic situation.
	This Christmas, many of my constituents are facing an uncertain future. They fear for their livelihoods. Their homes and savings are threatened by circumstances beyond their control. I say that there is fear, but there is also frustration, because my constituents do not feel that the Government have the same sense of urgency in helping struggling families and small businesses to weather the economic storm as they did when they bailed out the banks. Action is required at every level to help our country through the downturn.
	I am pleased to say that my local council was one of the first in the country to put together a comprehensive package of proposals to tackle the effects of the economic downturn locally, using the levers and networks at its disposal. That plan has already begun to deliver some results. I want to share some of those initiatives with hon. Members, because I hope that local authorities throughout the country will take them up in the coming weeks and months.
	One of the initiatives is to improve the cash flow of small businesses. More than 200 small businesses supply my local authority, Sutton council, which is cutting the time that it takes to pay its bills from 30 days to just 10. The feedback from business so far shows that many firms are complimenting Sutton council on being such a prompt payer by comparison with other local authorities. I hope that other local authorities will take a leaf out of the Government's book in cutting the time taken to pay bills, and out of the London borough of Sutton's. Business costs are also being cut by the council, by boosting the numbers taking up small business rate relief. I was very impressed by the fact that Sutton's efforts since late November have resulted in local companies saving £118,000—a crucial lifeline for hard-pressed businesses.
	Crucially at this time, we must ensure that those who are most at risk in the financial turmoil are claiming the benefits that they need to carry on. I am thinking in particular of the forgotten victims of the economic downturn: our senior citizens. Nationally, £1.8 billion of council tax benefit goes unclaimed every year, and pensioners in particular are missing out on £5 billion-worth of unpaid benefits. Those people already tend to be the poorest in our communities, and their situation is made far worse because they are unaware of what they are entitled to. Sutton council is working closely with the Pension Service, Sutton citizens advice bureau and Sutton borough Age Concern to promote and maximise benefit take-up, so that they ensure that pensioners and others are receiving the necessary help with their living costs.
	Pensioners often face much higher rates of inflation than the retail prices index suggests. Indeed, independent research has shown that seniors face an inflation rate of about 9 per cent., which is almost double the national average, and it is hardly surprising that pensioner poverty and pensioner indebtedness are serious and growing issues, compounded by the fact that pensions are not linked to earnings.
	Just one fifth of average earnings is the value of the UK pension, which makes it one of the lowest in the world and in western Europe. I shall cite a few countries as examples. It is lower than that of Hungary, Portugal and the Czech Republic, all of which are some 30 places below Britain in gross domestic product rankings. That is why my colleagues and I certainly argue very strongly that the earnings link should be reinstated now and why we believe that the basic state pension should be increased substantially.
	The Pensions Act 2008 aims to encourage private savings and to help those not in workplace schemes, but until the link to earnings is reintroduced, the foundation on which older people base their finances will be continuously eroded. A practical sign of the Government's commitment to encourage private savings would be to put in place the long-overdue compensation scheme in respect of Equitable Life victims.
	Although the credit crunch and economic downturn are undoubtedly defining issues of 2008 and will continue to dominate in 2009, other serious issues demand our attention, and one of them has been addressed already by the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Meg Munn) in a very good and thoughtful contribution about child protection. Undoubtedly, the tragic case of baby P has shocked the nation, yet there is a terrible familiarity about his dreadful death. It would have had strong echoes of the Victoria Climbié case even had it not occurred in Haringey. The majority of children who die from abuse or neglect in this country know the perpetrator; most abuse takes place within the family, or is done by friends. As a society, we are in denial about that hard truth.
	"There is a terrible sense of deja vu in the Laming report. The same weaknesses have led to the same mistakes, with the same missed opportunities to save a tortured child's life."
	I first said that in 2003, when I was the Liberal Democrat spokesman on child protection in this House, and I repeat it now. I have a deep sense of frustration about the fact that, fundamentally, nothing has changed with regard to the problems identified in the Laming report.
	Many initiatives have been taken; Every Child Matters is not just a phrase, but a series of actions that the Government have taken. However, there are still too many social work vacancies plugged by agency staff. There are still failures of oversight and accountability. There are still fragile systems of communication and collaboration between agencies. We saw a wave of resignations in the aftermath of the baby P case, and the almost ritualistic condemnation of social workers. That condemnation in turn deters people from applying to become social workers, which creates a vicious circle.
	Much of the blame for baby P's death has been placed at the door of Haringey social services, despite the fact that the police and medical professionals also saw him during his short life. Those other professionals all too often find themselves able to hide behind social workers, who bear the brunt and take the flak; as a result, they avoid their share of responsibility for what happened.
	Baby P was admitted to hospital twice. He was seen by a GP and he was taken to a child development clinic. During that time, his mother was arrested twice. The Crown Prosecution Service considered the case but decided not to prosecute. It took that decision just a day before he died. I agree entirely with the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley that we need to speed up serious case reviews and make sure that the Department that takes overall responsibility for those reviews, on behalf of us all, is much smarter in analysing the lessons from reports and translating those lessons into changes in practice on the ground.
	I nevertheless support my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Lynne Featherstone) in her call for a public inquiry, if only because it is essential that we look at what lessons were not learned from the Laming inquiry and take the necessary steps to ensure that they are learned.

Meg Munn: Does not the hon. Gentleman believe that a properly conducted serious case review should be able to identify the lessons that were not learned? The inquiry on the Victoria Climbié case and the lessons from it should now be part of practice.

Paul Burstow: Yes, but that is not what has happened, and that is why we seem to be in a never-ending cycle of child deaths from abuse. That is why there is still a case for an independent review. It is not just the national health service, the police, social workers and Haringey council that are culpable. The Government and inspectorates also have questions to answer. Why was no action taken in February 2007, when the Department of Health was warned by a former Haringey social worker of the failings in child protection there? Just what did Ofsted do when it took over responsibility? After all, we are talking about Haringey, the epicentre of the last tragic death that convulsed the child protection system.
	Ofsted's assessment method has been found wanting. The drive towards light-touch inspection regimes places lives at risk by obscuring the human reality of the chaotic lives with which social workers have to contend. That is hidden behind a spreadsheet of cold statistics. I read the transcript of the Children, Schools and Families Committee's inquiry and looked into the discussions with Ofsted's chief inspector of schools, and I was struck by how much reliance is still placed on data.
	The baby P case has yet again exposed a fundamental question: how do we spot and protect those at risk in our communities? What shocks us all about the abuse that baby P suffered is that when we look at the information that becomes available afterwards, we see that such tragedies are preventable. Even so, they happen time and again—and not just to children; they happen to people of all ages. The reality is that abuse is a concern not just for children, but for older people. Often, they are even more out of sight and out of mind. The numbers are appalling: every year 342,000 older people suffer unspeakable cruelty in this country. Most often it is physical, psychological, sexual or even financial, and it is perpetrated by those closest to the victim.
	Shockingly, 64 per cent. of elder abuse takes place within the family home. One individual who suffered unimaginable cruelty was Margaret Panting, who died in 2001 with 49 injuries to her body, and who was living with relatives in Sheffield. No one was prosecuted for those actions. Despite calls for new laws to protect people like Margaret Panting, nothing has happened. There is a bias towards children and victims of domestic violence in our safeguarding systems. Parliament has rightly legislated to tackle child abuse and domestic violence, but Governments have not followed the logic of that and legislated to protect adults who, through circumstance, become vulnerable. That lopsidedness in the system is graphically revealed in the staffing ratios for child and adult safeguarding. For example, in one primary care trust there are 10 members of staff covering child protection for every one responsible for adult protection. That may be a stark example, but I fear that it is far too typical. Legislation is essential to ensure that all the agencies involved in safeguarding adults really collaborate.
	If the tragic death of baby P could happen when social workers had a right of entry to his mother's home, what horrors are being perpetrated by adults on other adults when professionals can still be turned away on the doorstep by a person's supposed carer? We have to worry about that. I am not suggesting that legislation is a panacea that will instantly correct such terrible wrongs in our society. Humans will always err, and mistakes will happen, but we must ensure that our systems are as robust and resilient as possible, and are subject to rigorous testing.
	Just as I fear that Ofsted's drive towards light-touch inspection needs to be rethought, so too does the light-touch approach of the Commission for Social Care Inspection and its successor, the care quality commission. The laws on domestic violence brought about a shift in public attitudes on that issue; in the same way, it is time to give vulnerable adults and older people—a group to which we all hope to belong one day—the protection that they so rightly deserve.
	Another group that finds itself powerless and forgotten is those who come to this country seeking refuge from the conflict and unrest in some of our world's most troubled places. In particular, I want to highlight the situation in which some of my constituents have found themselves; I am sure that the situation is replicated across the country. Mandy Dube is from Zimbabwe, and has been living in the UK for the past 12 years. She applied for asylum in 2006 and she is, like thousands of others, still waiting for the outcome of that application. Yet in the meantime the Government have told Mandy that she is not entitled to work, and she is therefore left in limbo, waiting indefinitely, unable to earn the money that she needs to maintain a minimum standard of living.
	Similarly, another constituent, Pathmarajat Rajanaygam, a Tamil from Sri Lanka, has been suspended from his supermarket job because of a delay in determining his application. He is eligible to work under the terms of his leave to remain, but because he does not have the specific document that indicates that fact, his employers have suspended him pending the update in his status. In both cases, the UK Border Agency has left my constituents in legal and employment limbo. That may leave them destitute, and with little option other than to enter the black economy, where they risk being exploited.
	My Tamil constituents as a whole have a broader complaint to make to the Government. They strongly feel that not enough is being done, or has been done, to force the Singhalese Government to end the murder of innocent people, respect human rights and secure a peaceful settlement in that war-torn, troubled country. We in this country have a special responsibility, given our past colonial involvement in Sri Lanka, to seek a fair and just end to the conflict.
	I want to end my contribution by paying tribute to just some of the people in my constituency who make a difference to the lives of others. Clearly, time does not permit me to name everyone whom I should like to name, but in light of the comments that I have made about refugees and those seeking leave to remain in this country, I want to pay tribute to the work of Refugee Network Sutton. Its small group of volunteers work unstintingly to help people, not only when they first arrive in the area—they give them essentials such as groceries, cleaning material and bedding—but afterwards. They give people ongoing support with their integration into the community. English classes, drop-in centres, and Christmas and Eid parties are just some of the ways in which that dedicated Sutton-based group is transforming lives. I applaud what it does.
	I must also mention a few individuals. First, Marilyn Gordon-Jones, whom I nominated as a volunteer hero this summer and who came to the House to be recognised as such, has for many years given dedicated service at the Sutton Lodge day centre, Age Concern and Sutton Nursing. Her faithful commitment to and affection for those with whom she works rightly deserve our applause. Secondly, Shaun Whitehead commands the air cadets in my constituency. His huge personal commitment to the squadron is extraordinary. Young people so often get a bad press these days; it is great to see a youth leader with so much passion and commitment and young people who clearly get so much out of what he is doing.
	Thirdly, I want to acknowledge the tireless work of Heather Shaw, who took on the chairmanship of Sutton neighbourhood watch two years ago in difficult times. Her energy and enthusiasm have opened doors and the organisation's fortunes have turned around as a result. Finally, I should like to mention Melodie Shelbourne, who sadly died in January this year. She was the chief officer of Volunteer Action Sutton. She was a fantastic leader and motivator in the voluntary sector and she touched and changed the lives of many in my area. Everyone who knew her was the better for it, and she is sadly missed.
	Those are just a few of the people whom I have had the privilege of knowing and meeting in the past 12 months and for many years before that—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order.

Paul Burstow: I wish everyone a happy Christmas.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Every speech can be extended by such Christmas greetings, although we do appreciate them.

Mike Hall: I start on a point that I have raised in previous Adjournment debates; it was also raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, North-East (Mr. Crausby) at Prime Minister's questions yesterday. The point relates to United Utilities, which has changed how it bills for surface water drainage and highway drainage. Previously, the billing was done on the basis of rateable values, but the company has now brought in a fixed price based on the size of the curtilage of the property or domestic dwelling. That has had the sad and difficult unintended consequence of increasing bills for places of worship, scouting organisations, hospices and other charities, which previously enjoyed a zero rating for the purposes of paying rates. Now they have been brought into the new charging system and will see huge increases in what they have to pay for drainage in the next three years. I have raised the issue with United Utilities on a number of occasions, and its representatives always tell me two things: that the new system is revenue-neutral for the company, and that Ofwat has demanded that it should treat each of its customers in the same way and bill them fairly for the services that they receive.
	That is all well and good, but it does not take into account the contribution that places of worship, scouting organisations and hospices make to the communities that they serve. Every penny that such organisations have to spend on additional water rates—to the profit of United Utilities—is a penny less for the services that they provide. United Utilities has said that the new billing system was demanded by Ofwat and was a requirement of the Government, so for some time I have been seeking a meeting with the Minister responsible. Due to the Government reshuffle, that meeting has not taken place.

Keith Vaz: Name him!

Mike Hall: It might be a "her".

Keith Vaz: Name her!

Mike Hall: I am not going to. I am going to ask the Deputy Leader of the House whether he will use his good offices to do two things. The first is to ensure that the meeting takes place in the new year. The matter has been raised on both sides of the House and in various different places, and we need that meeting to take place. I also ask my hon. Friend to make sure that the Government take an inter-departmental look at the problem to see what we can do to bring relief for places of worship, scouting organisations, hospices and other organisations that have been caught by the change in policy. It would also be helpful if United Utilities produced figures that demonstrated beyond any doubt that the policy is revenue-neutral. You will not be surprised, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to hear that I have been visited by lots of organisations that are paying more, but by no one who is paying less.
	That leads me to my next concern. It is a sad shame that the former Member for Crewe and Nantwich, my good and honourable friend the late Gwyneth Dunwoody, cannot be here, because she would be about to see me eat humble pie. Some time ago, we had an exchange in an Adjournment debate about whether there should be unitary local government in Cheshire. Gwyneth made a powerful—and, I thought, misguided—speech about why she opposed it, and I spent some of my time telling her why I thought that she was wrong. It may turn out that Gwyneth was far more right than me, and I shall explain why as briefly as possible.
	One of the first things that the new Cheshire West and Chester shadow unitary authority did was advertise for a new chief executive with a salary of £173,000—as close as it is possible to get to the Prime Minister's salary, although the two jobs are significantly different. I have a local government background and do not object to local government officials being paid the rate for the job; I just do not think that £173,000 is such a rate—it is far too much.
	The next decision taken by the shadow authority concerned special responsibility payments. In local government, the tradition is that if a person is entitled to more than one such payment, they take the highest but do not take the second or third. The shadow authority decided that people can take as many responsibility payments as they have been awarded, which is wrong. When I was the leader of a local council, there were no special responsibility payments, although that is not the issue as I do not disagree with the system. However, when council tax payers' money is spent, it should be spent fairly and properly.
	I was also very much in favour of unitary local government, because I thought that it would bring service delivery closer to communities and improve services, but I have been proved wrong again. From 1 April, we will have a two-tier refuse collection service in the new unitary authority. The rubbish bins of the residents of Chester will be emptied once a week, and those of the residents of Vale Royal will be emptied once a fortnight. When I first asked the chief executive what the unit cost per household would be in 2009-10, he said that he could not tell me until September 2010. That, of course, was nonsense. He has now given me some indicative figures, which show that fortnightly household refuse collection in Vale Royal will cost £46.37; the weekly collection in Chester, however, will cost the princely sum of £46.48. For 9p extra, the residents of Chester will have their bins emptied once a week, while bins in Vale Royal will be emptied once a fortnight. I am not sure whether those figures compare apples with apples—the figures given by the chief executive may not compare like with like—but if the difference is only 9p, I do not see why, in a unitary council that starts on 1 April 2009, there should be a two-tier refuse collection. Refuse collection is one of the services for which householders pay their council tax. If it is right for there to be weekly collection in one part of the new authority, it should be right in another.
	I am also very concerned that the shadow unitary authority has decided to reduce the number of programme area boards from eight to five; the whole purpose of bringing democracy closer to people was that there would be those area boards. The three towns in Vale Royal—Frodsham, Northwich and Winsford—are being put into rural area boards, when they should have boards of their own, so that they can be involved in the decision-making process. That was in the "People and Places" consultation document that we took forward during the debate on the unitary authority, and that is what I would expect the authority to implement.
	I move on to incineration, another controversial issue in my constituency. My constituency has three proposals for waste incinerators; none of them is in my constituency, but three are on its borders. One at Weston Point has already been approved. It is in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Halton (Derek Twigg). It was wrongly approved; it should have gone to a public inquiry, but it did not. It has now been decided that it will go ahead. Another incinerator is proposed for Ince Marshes, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Andrew Miller); it went to a public inquiry and a decision is awaited. There were very strong grounds for that application to be refused, as it is not in the Cheshire waste management plant, but on a greenfield site designated specifically for the expansion of the petrochemical industry. It is the wrong location, and we await the result.
	The third proposal is for an incinerator in Lostock, in the constituency of the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne); it is on the boundary with Northwich, which is in the southern part of my constituency. I have contacted Cheshire county council about its proposals, but it is not prepared to give me information of any substance on the basis that it is in negotiations with four preferred bidders about its waste strategy for the next 25 years. The discussions are taking place in secret, and the council does not want to inform me about what is going on. I have been in touch with one of the preferred bidders, the Waste Recycling Group, which brought forward the proposal for the incinerator at Lostock. It has confirmed that waste incineration is an integral part of its plan and that Cheshire county council has said that it wants a self-sufficient approach to the disposal of its waste.
	If Weston Point incinerator is built by INEOS Chlor, it will take all the waste from Merseyside, Greater Manchester and Cheshire. There is no economic case for a second or third incinerator on the periphery of my constituency. I am concerned that Cheshire county council has not yet grasped that point, and that it is still proposing to go ahead with a policy of waste incineration and will announce the two preferred bidders in February. It will then be for the new unitary authority, with Cheshire East unitary authority, to decide how to proceed. I am strongly of the opinion that the proposed incinerator at Lostock is totally unnecessary and economically unviable, and that if it were to be built it would have to import waste from elsewhere, which would break the Stockholm convention and pose a threat to public health in the area. I wanted to put my thoughts about that on the record.
	I want to move on to an issue that has been a great cause of concern to me—the outbreak of measles in my constituency. I would not call it an epidemic, but there has been a massive increase in the number of my constituents and their children who are suffering from measles, which is the overspill from the now discredited campaign to discredit the MMR jab. My area of Cheshire has experienced the largest outbreak of measles outside London. The Health Protection Agency contacted schools and parents to try to encourage them to have the jab. We now have teenagers who are susceptible to contracting measles, which is a very infectious disease. Most people who were involved in the campaign to discredit the MMR jab, including those who demanded of the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, that he say whether his son Leo had had the MMR jab, share responsibility for the outbreak of measles in my constituency. We must now give a positive message on MMR, encourage people to take up the vaccinations that are available and contain that very contagious disease once and for all. I hope that in the weeks and months ahead parents in my constituency will feel confident that they can now go to their GP or nurse practitioner and say, "We want our children vaccinated with the MMR jab. We know that it's safe and there are no contingent health risks, and it will benefit the health of our children."
	I think that Members would be disappointed if I did not give them an update on progress at Daresbury science and innovation campus in my constituency.

Meg Munn: We are all agog.

Mike Hall: I am sure that that is so, because this week at Daresbury we have had a European first. There is a prototype machine there called ALICE—accelerators and lasers in combined experiments. Alice is of course part of the "Alice in Wonderland" story, and Daresbury is where the Rev. Dodgson lived and wrote the stories, so that is a nice connection. The people there have accelerated electrons to 99.9 per cent. of the speed of light and minus 271° C, which is as close as possible to absolute zero. They have demonstrated that we can now look at chemical experiments as if we were making movies or videos in real time. That will take science on to the next level—it is a major breakthrough.
	It is even better than that, though. By generating the energy that is needed to accelerate the electrons as closely as possible to the speed of light so that they can be peeled off in straight lines through X-ray machines, they have demonstrated energy recovery, so all the energy that is put into accelerating the electrons can go back to the start, and we can start all over again at a reduced cost. Those electrons are going to be accelerated at about 11 million V. It is absolutely dynamic science. That is not the end of the project, as some people might think. Now that we have proved that the experiment works, the scientific possibilities are endless. The new light source, which I hope the British scientific community will take on, has been proven at Daresbury, and the intellectual possibilities of the prototype should be exploited to the full.
	I want to finish on an unusual note. Last Friday—this is most unusual for most Members of Parliament—I opened a post office. In the Northwich part of my constituency, Mr. and Mrs. Asif have opened a post office in the high street. They invited me along to do the opening, and the shop was absolutely full of customers taking advantage not only of the services provided by the post office but of other services. They have innovative ideas about how they are going to make this post office succeed, and I was delighted to be part of that opening. I hope that the venture is a huge success and that my constituents have a fantastic benefit from it.
	Finally, I wish to refer to my constituent, Mr. Bert Dyson, Member of Parliament— [ Interruption. ] I am sorry—Member of the Order of the British Empire. However, Bert would make a very good MP. In the past 25 years, Bert has been behind a project with Helsby golf club to raise money to purchase powered wheelchairs for severely disabled children. In the years that Bert has been doing that work, enough money has been raised to purchase 259 powered wheelchairs, which have transformed the lives of the children who have had them. Bert has had to retire because of ill health and has passed the reins on to another member of the committee, although he will still be involved in fundraising. I thought it appropriate to mark the occasion of Bert's retirement by mentioning him in my speech and congratulating him on the excellent work that he has done to improve the quality of life of young children with severe disabilities in my constituency.

Several hon. Members: rose —

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. May I say to hon. Members that they do not have to take 15 minutes? If each succeeding speaker does so, not everyone will get called. That is just a hint.

Patrick McLoughlin: I will try to abide by your hint, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
	Let me start by welcoming the Deputy Leader of the House, who will wind up one of these Adjournment debates for the first time. He has been a regular attendee in the House on many occasions and has always taken part assiduously in House business and House matters. He brings to his office an understanding of the Chamber that perhaps some of his predecessors did not have. I look forward to hearing him wind up the debate and to his taking up seriously the matters that we raise.
	I want to comment on a few issues that have been prominent in my postbag over the past few months, including Post Office card accounts. The Government have now made a decision on that, which I welcome. However, what is unacceptable is the vast amount of time that it took them to take that decision and the uncertainty that it led to in the whole post office system. We are to have a further debate next year on the whole question of Royal Mail, which will be very controversial for some Members. Given how post offices have served rural communities so well, I regret the amount of time that the Government took to reach a decision. That has added to the problem of the survival of post offices as people take decisions on whether to buy them.
	In a similar vein, many people, particularly in rural areas, are concerned about the Government's handling of the issue of dispensing from GP practices. The Government announced a decision on Thursday, but the consultation process closed only a few weeks ago. One wonders why there was such a consultation process. I suspect that the Government realised that they were getting themselves into exactly the same kind of mess with the issue of pharmacies and GP dispensing as they did with post offices. I hope that following that consultation some recommendations are taken on board about allowing GP practices to offer wider services from the pharmacies that they operate in their surgeries. That would be an addition to the rural practices that would be welcomed by GPs and by patients who have to use those practices.
	I have often mentioned in these Adjournment debates the quarry on Longstone Edge. That matter is expected to go to the High Court some time early in the new year. The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has received me in a meeting on that issue, which I welcome. He has considered it in great detail and has taken many measures which, I hope, will be able to reassure my constituents, depending on the outcome of the High Court decision. I will say no more than that. When one often attacks the Government or says that they are getting things wrong, it is right to say when they are getting something right, and I welcome what the Secretary of State is doing.
	I want to consider rural broadband because broadband is vital to our country. Although we have almost 100 per cent. coverage, a significant proportion of UK households still suffer from an unreliable connection and poor connection speeds. Poorly served households tend to be in rural areas, where many share an exchange, and are further away from it. A digital divide is developing, and there is a broadband divide between urban areas, which have a much faster service, and rural areas. If there are to be rural jobs and if companies are to prosper in rural areas, broadband is vital because it is essential to the operation of a business.
	I want to express a great concern. When we are informed that things will happen, especially by the Prime Minister, they should happen. On 3 December, the Prime Minister stated:
	"There will be a statement before the House rises at Christmas."
	Many of us are used to the Prime Minister, so some people shouted, "Which Christmas?"

Chris Bryant: It was the right hon. Gentleman.

Patrick McLoughlin: The Deputy Leader of the House is correct—it was me. The Prime Minister said:
	"There will be a statement before the House rises this Christmas."—[ Official Report, 3 December 2008; Vol. 485, c. 38.]
	It is disgraceful that that promise—and the Prime Minister's word—has not been kept. I hope that the Deputy Leader of the House will give us the genuine reason for that. Last week, the Leader of the House said that it was a matter of dotting the i's and crossing the t's. It must be taking a long time to dot i's and cross t's if we must wait nearly four weeks for the statement. In all seriousness, not fulfilling a commitment made at the Dispatch Box to provide a statement before Christmas is a disgraceful way in which to treat the House.
	My constituency is large and rural, and bovine tuberculosis is a big issue for agriculture. It costs this country a fortune—it is estimated to have cost between £600 million and £800 million in the past 10 years. The current policy is failing: 200,000 cattle have been slaughtered, yet the incidence of bovine TB doubles every four and a half years. A comprehensive package of measures is needed to tackle cattle transmission and the impact on the countryside. It is worth remembering not only that infected badgers are responsible for the majority of TB breakdowns in cattle, but that they suffer a slow and painful death. It is a serious animal welfare issue and the Government have not dealt with it. I appreciate that there are tough decisions to make, but we cannot continue with the current increases in TB—it costs the country a huge amount of money, which is basically wasted. I want the Government to take that on board.
	The Derbyshire building society has proudly talked about its independence as a building society owned by its members for many years. It was therefore a great shock to read in  The Sunday Times that the Nationwide was about to take it over. I have subsequently received several letters about the way in which that was done. I have written to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, especially about the position of the Derbyshire building society, which sold its Isle of Man subsidiary, Derbyshire Offshore, to the Kaupthing bank in 2007. Many people have lost a huge amount of money and grave uncertainty remains about whether they will be compensated. To what extent did the Financial Services Authority clear the Derbyshire building society's actions when it sold off its offshore service? Were those who had investments in the offshore service properly briefed about the implications? I wrote to the Chancellor in November, but I have yet to receive a response. I realise that it is a complicated subject, but my constituents who have lost huge amounts of money deserve some explanation of what the Government are doing about the matter.
	One aspect of the current economic climate that greatly worries me is the treatment of all the people who have done the right thing for a long time and saved money for their retirement. When they hear about interest rates decreasing, possibly below the current 3 per cent., as far as the Bank of England is concerned, it is ridiculous for the Government to tell them that they are getting a 10 per cent. return on their savings. The Government cannot continue to say that—they must revise the figure. Ten per cent. was generous even before we hit the current economic climate. We owe a special debt to people who have saved for a long time for their retirement and to have the little extras. If we do not acknowledge that, the House and the Government convey the message that those who save are wasting their time, because they get no reward. I hope that the Government will tackle that serious problem as soon as possible.
	There are several other issues, which affect my constituency, that I could raise. However, bearing in mind what you asked hon. Members to do, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I shall simply take the opportunity to thank all House of Commons staff who have helped me so much with my responsibilities in the House throughout the year. I hope that they have a merry Christmas and a contented new year.

John Grogan: It is a great pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for West Derbyshire (Mr. McLoughlin), who made several common-sense points about a wide range of issues. As the Member of Parliament who represents the most rural Labour constituency in England, I agree with him especially about the importance of GP pharmacies. If it ain't broke, don't fix it is a good Yorkshire saying, which applies in that case. I also agree with him about rural broadband. In North Yorkshire, we are lucky to have a company called Nynet, which North Yorkshire county council backs, that helps with the position.
	I want to consider four issues, which have some connection with the Christmas season. I want to say a few words about public transport over the Christmas period. Many hon. Members will shortly make their way back to their constituencies by train to celebrate Christmas. Many of us have already bought our copy of the Christmas  Radio Times, and I want to talk about a television-related issue. Sport is part of the Christmas season and I am proudly wearing my Bradford City tie and looking forward to the Boxing day fixture against Lincoln. I have one sport-related matter to mention. Of course, as chairman of the all-party beer group, I urge all hon. Members to pay a professional or personal visit to a pub during the Christmas season. I am sure many of us will do that.
	I draw hon. Members' attention to early-day motion 328, which I tabled about public transport in the United Kingdom over the Christmas holidays. In the past six or seven years, a revolution has taken place in our major cities in buses running on Boxing day. Buses—and, indeed, the underground—have run in London on Boxing day for many years. However, a few years ago, almost no other buses in England ran on that day. West midlands passenger transport authority revolutionised its provision of buses on Boxing day six or seven years ago. It started an experiment, initially with a subsidy, but now the buses are run on a commercial basis as people travel to sporting fixtures, go to the shops—the Government are currently encouraging retail spending—or visit family and friends. That practice has spread to all passenger transport authorities in England—they are all running some buses this year, and that is vital.
	However, apart from the Heathrow Express, the Gatwick Express and one or two services in Scotland, there are almost no trains for 58 hours. That does not happen in the rest of Europe, where at least a Sunday service runs the day after Christmas. Many of us will have the pleasure of the company of relatives over the Christmas period, but 58 hours can be quite a long time in some cases. More seriously, some people cannot go home for Christmas because they have to be at work on 27 December, and they know that they cannot get back in time. They might lose their job if they cannot get back.
	The Government need to look into whether Network Rail and the train operating companies could provide some services on Boxing day. Contradictory arguments are put forward against that proposal. Some Ministers have said that everyone deserves a good period of time off, but they also point to the engineering works being carried out over that time. There is a certain contradiction in those arguments. I have spoken to representatives of TransPennine Express, who say that the most popular day of the year at Manchester airport is Boxing day, yet there are no trains to Manchester airport on that day. Why should Manchester be different from Gatwick? The company is willing to run trains on Boxing day on an experimental basis from York—perhaps even from Selby—through Leeds to Manchester airport. That would help the retail sector and the sporting fixtures as well as the airport. Ministers really need to take an interest in this important matter.
	Mr. Deputy Speaker, I do not know what your favourite television programme will be over the festive period, but, once the festive period is over, in January, the public service broadcasting review will be published by Ofcom. This could markedly change the nature of future Christmases on television. I want to highlight the role of ITV in this regard. ITV is trying to get rid of many of its public service obligations. Clearly, the value of ITV licences will come down in the coming years, as we approach the digital switchover.
	Having commended one early-day motion tabled in my name, I should now like to commend another. Early-day motion 2283 relates to regional production quotas for ITV, and there are still a few hours left before the Christmas recess in which Members may sign it. It examines the important issue of ITV's current obligation to spend 50 per cent. of its total programme spend outside the M25. ITV is trying to bring that down to 35 per cent. However, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport observed at the time of the last public service broadcasting review that the 50 per cent. out-of-London production quota was non-negotiable. It was fixed at that level, partly as compensation for ITV reducing its regional news coverage. It is important, particularly for Leeds and Manchester, that ITV should continue to make a large number of its programmes there. Surely it is cheaper to make programmes in the north of England than in the capital city. It would be the final victory of Carlton over Granada—those two companies merged a few years ago—if the regional production quota were decreased. A relatively small amount of money is involved in the out-of-London production quota: Ofcom estimates the cost at £5 million.
	On a wider point, I hope that, when the regulator produces the public service broadcasting review, some obligations on ITV will be retained. Even when we reach the digital switchover in 2013, ITV's use of the spectrum and its position on the electronic programme guide will still be worth about £45 million to ITV. Out-of-London production costs ITV £5 million, national news costs it £5 million, current affairs costs it £7 million, and original British production costs it £8 million, and all those things should remain for future British television programmes and British Christmases.
	Mr. Deputy Speaker, I know that you are a cricket fan, but I do not know whether you are a racing fan. There will be many race meetings on Boxing day and, at the moment, the BBC and Channel 4 are renegotiating their television contracts for 2010 and beyond. The BBC is threatening to halve its coverage of racing, and I think that that would be a great pity. For many of the people who watch its racing coverage, it is the mainstay of their BBC viewing, and 75 per cent. of racing fans who watch it on TV come from the social classes C2, D and E. I hope that this will not be the last year that the BBC shows the Welsh grand national. I think that it is on 27 December, and it is one of the few bits of live sport on terrestrial television over Christmas. I hope that the BBC will maintain its current commitment to racing in future contracts.

Philip Davies: May I commend to the hon. Gentleman the article on this very subject in the  Racing Post by Peter O'Sullevan? He is not just a racing great; he is a BBC great as well. The hon. Gentleman is entirely right to support the argument that the BBC should not cut its racing coverage.

John Grogan: As always, the hon. Gentleman gives me a good tip; he is particularly good at doing that. He has also now given me a suggestion for my Christmas reading, which I will certainly follow up.
	Finally, a word on pubs. The all-party parliamentary group on beer has set itself a considerable task for next year: we want to make the debate about the future of community pubs as central to the politics of 2009 as the debate on post offices was in 2008. Perhaps 10 per cent. of pubs—that is, about 5,000 of them—will be threatened with closure next year. The pubs in many villages and suburbs are the centre of the community. They are the place where people go to celebrate, to complain about life, to mourn and to seek friendship. They are a great feature of British life.

Keith Vaz: Does my hon. Friend agree that part of the reason why pubs are threatened with closure is that supermarkets are selling alcohol at very low prices? Do we not need a floor price to enable other institutions such as pubs and clubs to compete equally and fairly?

John Grogan: I have always been an assiduous reader of the Select Committee reports that my right hon. Friend produces. He has taken the words right out of my mouth: the essential problem for British pubs is the widening differential between prices in pubs and in the off trade. When I was a young man, the difference was about three times—that is, it was three times more expensive to buy a pint in a pub as it was to buy the equivalent amount of beer in a supermarket. Now, the margin is eight times, and widening.
	The Scottish Government are suggesting that a minimum price be introduced next year, and it will be interesting to see what impact that has on the debate in the rest of the United Kingdom. There are other routes that could be explored as well. In Europe, the different regulations relating to VAT are once again being examined, and it is possible that regulations could be passed allowing a lower rate of duty on draught beer, which would be another way of allowing the pubs to compete more favourably. I hope and expect that this will be an important issue for Parliament in the coming year.
	No preview of Parliament in 2009 would be complete without a little reflection on the impact of President-elect Barack Obama on world and British politics, and he also has a connection with British pubs. He visited a British pub in 1996 while on a stag weekend, so he has some experience of them. Furthermore, in Adam Boulton's reflections on the Blair and Brown years, he reflects that our own Prime Minister was more comfortable in a pub environment than his predecessor. He spotted him in the Marquis of Granby, and said that the Prime Minister had apparently visited the pub of his own free will. So, having outlined the task for the all-party parliamentary group on beer, I shall finish by saying that when the new President visits these shores—in April, I think—I very much hope that our Prime Minister will invite him to a British pub, perhaps the Marquis of Granby, for at least one pint of British beer.

Andrew Turner: First, I should like to talk about the difficulty that local councils face in providing evidence to support planning decisions at the appeal stage. I want to highlight the inadequacy of planning inspectorate investigations based on these cases. The Isle of Wight councillor for Sandown South, Ian Ward, has drawn my attention to a case in my constituency. A council planning decision relating to No. 16, Grafton street, Sandown had been partly overturned at appeal by the planning inspectorate. A landlord had, without permission, changed the use of a residential home for the elderly into a house in multiple occupation. The council put out an enforcement order against the landlord, preventing him from doing this. The landlord appealed against the council decision and the planning inspectorate launched an investigation.
	The premises, the inspector heard, had been linked to noise, public order offences and at least one assault. The inspector seemed not to have established whether the incidents resulted in any convictions, or even just their outcome—hardly a thorough investigation. Furthermore, at the time the landlord bought the premises, it housed 13 residents. At the time of the appeal, the single announced inspection found it housed only six—again, this was not a good way of establishing the facts. Further evidence of disturbances was presented by other neighbours. The inspector decided that
	"some of those incidents appear to be related to disturbances in the street rather than being directly related to the appellant's property. Some, no doubt, were disturbances that occurred in the street. Some however, we infer, did relate to the appellant's property"—
	woolly words for a woolly investigation. Despite all the evidence that convinced the council, the planning inspector decided to allow the landlord to change the use of the premises as he had requested. The appeal decision resulted in only a minor change to the original application.
	I share Councillor Ward's primary concern. The planning inspector showed total disregard for the negative impact his decision would make on the neighbouring community. I know that the situation has been replicated on the island, and I suspect that it occurs on the mainland, too. In my view, the end result is often an appeal decision based on inadequate information which is not in the public's interest. It means that many justifiable council decisions are overturned at great cost to the taxpayer by the planning inspectorate. Does the Minister agree that the planning inspectorate has failed the public in cases such as the one I have cited?
	On a different issue, my constituent, Mr. Gower, is concerned that despite the availability of 03 telephone numbers, Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs continues to use 0845 numbers, which, as they are not available as part of package deals, typically cost the consumer more than local calls. A complaints manager at HMRC has confirmed that it is looking into alternatives to the 0845 system that would offer benefits to users. As long ago as June 2007, the consumers organisation Which? found widespread confusion about the prices of these non-geographic calls and recommended that they be replaced with 03 numbers. Will the Minister ensure that work on looking at alternatives to the current system is prioritised?
	To move on again, I am extremely concerned about the withdrawal of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs collection service for fallen cattle from January 2009, and I would add my support to the work carried out by the National Fallen Stock Company and the National Farmers Union to find a long-term solution to the particular problems faced by Isle of Wight farmers. Our farmers are in an invidious position in that they want to comply with requirements under the TSE—transmissible spongiform encephalopathies—and animal by-products regulations, but there is currently no infrastructure that enables them to do so.
	I deplore the need to get permission from the EU to deal properly with fallen stock. I am grateful to the Minister for seeking derogation in relation to the TSE regulations, but we need a proper solution to these problems. Will the Minister support the provision of a "bulking-up" facility that would enable carcases to be collected in one place and then shipped off the island in bulk? Alternatively, will he work with local people to ensure that an incinerator facility is provided on the island, which would be a long-term solution to some of these problems?
	Finally, it was brought to my attention earlier this month that an Isle of Wight bailiff had been ill and off work. It went on for some months, with the result that the Isle of Wight has had no bailiff service for law-abiding landlords. Bailiffs from Portsmouth county court were to provide cover in the meantime, but it seems they were unable to do so and, more importantly, the island authorities were not informed. Although the original bailiff has since returned to part-time duty, this is only on a part-time basis and the confusion has caused significant delays in carrying out the law.
	On a related matter, I was informed that one of my constituents had been treated disgracefully by the Ministry of Justice. He had applied for the post of full-time replacement bailiff for the Isle of Wight in July this year and by August he had been offered a position. He was then made to wait 15 weeks, during which he was told that Criminal Records Bureau documentation had been lost, which he then had to replace at his own expense. He was finally told in November this year that the funding for the position had been withdrawn. He had been strung along by the Ministry of Justice HR department for 15 weeks before it informed him of the situation. Meanwhile, the patchy cover afforded by Portsmouth bailiffs put pressure on Portsmouth's own resources. Not only did it cost the taxpayer additional ferry fares to ship them to and from the island, but there were periods when there was no one to act as bailiff.
	Needless to say, the constituent in question is extremely angry. He has incurred personal expense in travelling to the mainland for interviews and providing paperwork. He had not applied for other posts over the previous four months because he had been told very clearly that he had a job with the Ministry of Justice. I ask the Minister why, if funding for a new bailiff for the island was available as late as October, it was withdrawn in November? Why was my constituent led on a wild goose chase for several months after August when he could have been seeking other employment? Will the Minister please look into those matters?
	Those four items are causes of some concern and I am glad to have had the opportunity to bring them to the Minister's attention. For the most part, however, the Isle of Wight is a beautiful and well blessed place in which to live. I am grateful for the assistance that you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, have given to my constituents and I wish you a merry Christmas and a peaceful and happy new year.

Keith Vaz: It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Turner), who raised some important issues about the planning system, one of which I hope to take up in my small contribution to the debate.
	I begin by joining the Conservative Chief Whip in praising my hon. Friend the new Deputy Leader of the House in advance of his maiden speech in these debates. I am sure it will be scintillating. He has been one of the usual suspects who have attended these debates in recent years, and it must be the nightmare of any usual suspect that they would end up having to answer the issues raised by hon. Members.
	I know that we will get a wonderful contribution from the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Angela Browning), who in each of the Adjournment debates before a recess always invites hon. Members to visit her constituency. We have no statistics, though, showing how many take up her invitation .
	I have no quarries or incinerators to speak about, but I start by thanking the Home Secretary for a decision that she took yesterday, I think, which was obvious in the published version of the Policing and Crime Bill, which received its First Reading in the House today. On Tuesday the Home Affairs Committee took evidence from the Local Government Association and the Association of Police Authorities, and I wrote to the Home Secretary telling her that the Government's proposals for directly elected members of police authorities were fundamentally flawed. Forty-eight hours later, the proposals have been withdrawn. The Home Affairs Committee, of course, takes credit for that decision.
	The Home Secretary chose, unfortunately, not to make a statement to the House, but instead to announce her changes to Patrick Wintour of  The Guardian. Nevertheless, we are grateful for what the Government have done. It surely would have been wrong to give single-interest or extremist groups the chance to get elected to police authorities, thereby aiding the politicisation of the police. There is always politics in policing, clearly, because we have a Home Secretary who is about to choose the next Metropolitan Police Commissioner, but what we were concerned about, and what every group that wrote to the Select Committee was concerned about, was the fact that if we have those elections, there is a danger that the whole police agenda could be hijacked in a particular direction. I thank the Government for what they have done.
	I am not quite so keen on the statement that the Government put out today concerning the review of the rights of Romanian and Bulgarian citizens to come to work in the United Kingdom. I declare my interest as a former Minister for Europe with responsibility for enlargement. I have always felt that the citizens of countries that join the European Union should be treated as equal citizens, and I could never understand why Romania and Bulgaria were singled out among the 27 for their citizens not to be given full and equal rights to come to work in the United Kingdom.
	The Government review the decision every year and have just put before the House a written statement indicating that they are not changing their position, and that those who come to work from Romania and Bulgaria will have to continue to work as self-employed people. That is the wrong decision because it results in even greater difficulty in dealing with employment issues, though I welcome the Government's decision to expand one of the tiers to allow more agricultural workers, which will benefit people such as my hon. Friend the Member for Selby (Mr. Grogan) and others who represent rural constituencies and have been complaining of the lack of people applying for such jobs.
	I shall raise three brief points concerning a number of matters which I hoped the Government would have allowed more time to discuss before the House adjourned. The first is a matter that I have raised on a number of occasions—diabetes. I declare my interest as someone who has type 2 diabetes. I suppose it is the way I discovered that I have type 2 diabetes that encourages me to raise the matter in the House at every opportunity, especially as we arrive at the Christmas season.
	The chairman of the all-party beer group is encouraging Members to visit pubs over the Christmas period—not something that many Members will feel reluctant to do. However, I caution Members who have not had a diabetes test. I do not want to embarrass Members over whether or not they have been tested for diabetes, but as they enter the Christmas spirit and are given boxes of chocolates and sweets and consume a lot of sweet foods and carbohydrates over the next four weeks, they should pause, especially if they are slightly overweight—again, I am not looking at any right hon. or hon. Members in particular. If they have that slight problem, it is vital that over the Christmas period they have a diabetes test. The test takes only a few seconds, and they will then know whether they should consult their GP in order to have further treatment.
	That is how I discovered I had type 2 diabetes just a few years ago. I am not saying that as a result I am not as overweight as I was five years ago, but that discovery enabled me to take my medication. There are 2.2 million people in the United Kingdom who are diagnosed with diabetes, but 750,000 people are unaware that they have the disease. One of the problems facing us as legislators is that it is costing the Government £1 million an hour to treat people for both type 1 and type 2 diabetes. It accounts for approximately one tenth—10 per cent.—of the entire NHS budget.
	Let me issue a plea to Ministers, and indeed other Members, to raise this issue in their constituencies. We hear fantastic statistics about the amount of money that the Government have put into the health service—more money than has been invested in it at any time before. I should like that money to be spent on preventive medicine—on screening people and making sure that they are healthy—rather than its being spent on them when they go into hospital, which, of course, is much more expensive. This also applies to young people. Nearly one in four children aged four or five in English primary schools are overweight or obese, and there are approximately 1,400 children who have type 2 diabetes—some as young as seven—as a result of being overweight. Some have inherited their condition from their parents. I inherited mine from my mother, who sadly died of diabetes complications.
	I also want to talk about mobile phone masts, which touches on the subject raised by the hon. Member for Isle of Wight: the planning system. We all use mobile phones, or most of us do. There are 65 million mobile phone handsets in the United Kingdom. There must, therefore, be mobile phone masts; otherwise we would not be able to communicate with each other through our mobile phones.
	I am constantly reminded by constituents of the problems that they experience when mobile phone companies erect mobile phone masts without consultation and without taking the views of local people into consideration. If a mast is less than 15 m high, companies do not have to apply for full planning permission; they can make a prior approval application to the local planning authority, which has only eight weeks in which to object. If it does not object, there is deemed planning consent. Leicester's planning department is, I suppose, as busy as any of the other planning departments in Members' constituencies, and because it is so busy, it is difficult for it to adhere to its timetable. As a result, masts are being erected without the support or co-operation of local people. If a mast is over 15 m high, of course, a planning application must be made.
	At the start of 2008, there were about 50,300 base station sites in the United Kingdom. Two-thirds are on existing structures and buildings. There are now nearly 74 million mobile connections in the United Kingdom, and the number is increasing every day. I am sure that other Members, including the Deputy Leader of the House, have had representations about it. We need to review the regulations very carefully, and stop the mobile phone companies automatically being given permission just because the local authority is not able to reply in time. I urge the Government to look into the issue.
	The latest such proposal affects a road at the heart of my constituency, the Melton road, which is frequently visited by the shadow Leader of the House, the hon. Member for North-West Cambridgeshire (Mr. Vara), when he comes to see his relatives in Leicester and goes out to buy his bhajias—not budgerigars, as I have been misquoted as saying—in the Belgrave road. When he goes there, he will observe the ambience of the Belgrave and Melton roads. The latest proposal by Vodafone is to erect a huge mast on the pavement of the Melton road, one of the busiest roads in the country. That would spoil the local environment and upset local residents—and, of course, their Member of Parliament and local councillors. It is decisions of that kind that cause so much upset. Representatives of Vodafone came to see me last week, and I told them that I would oppose the proposal. I think it extremely important for us to take account of the detrimental effect that such decisions made by companies have on the appearance of an area.
	Sadly, I do not have a list of constituents that I can read out at the end of my speech to thank them for all their work—those who have distributed leaflets for me, or who have been particularly kind, or to whom I have forgotten to send Christmas cards. I think, however, that we ought to have a debate about changing the procedures of the House. Perhaps at the end of each day's sitting, when petitions are presented, Members can present lists of constituents who are local heroes and heroines, so that we need not necessarily do so during the Christmas Adjournment debate.
	May I take this opportunity to wish everyone who works in the House—the staff and Officers of the House, and my own staff in particular—a wonderful Christmas break? We look forward to seeing everyone again in January.

Andrew MacKay: As this is the season of good will, let me join the right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) in congratulating the Deputy Leader of the House on his speech in advance. I think that that is a very good practice, and it is probably the safest way to move forward. May I also associate myself with the right hon. Gentleman's remarks on mobile phone masts? They were well made, and there must be similar problems in almost all our constituencies.
	As this is the season of good will and also because I shall perhaps say a few harsh things later on, may I commend some of the speeches of Labour Members? On the contribution of the hon. Member for Selby (Mr. Grogan), let me be the first to volunteer: yes, I will be visiting a pub over the Christmas period and I will think of him when I do so.

Keith Vaz: Which pub?

Andrew MacKay: I thought the right hon. Gentleman was going to spoil my next remarks by drawing Members' attention to the fact that President-elect Obama visited a pub in our country. He did so while visiting relatives in Bracknell, but unfortunately he chose to go to a pub in the neighbouring Wokingham constituency. That was a mistake, but I am sure it can be put right.
	It was refreshing to hear the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mr. Hall) admit that he got something wrong. Would it not be wonderful if a few more of us Members did that a little more often? May I associate myself with his remarks on what seem to be the sometimes excessive salaries of chief executives and other senior officers of local authorities? That point becomes even more valid and relevant as the current economic recession bites even harder for many of our constituents.
	Finally, while I am trying to be nice to Labour Members, let me commend the speech of the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Meg Munn). Although she is for the moment absent from the Chamber, let me also say—I think I speak for many Members on both sides of the House in doing so—that I was both surprised and disappointed when she was removed from the Government Front Bench. There would be a long list of Government Members whom I would have removed first. As was made clear by her speech, we in this House will benefit from her being on the Back Benches, and that will be a loss to the Government.
	I wish to raise four issues that I believe the House should have addressed more fully before the Christmas recess. The first is the arrest of my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green) and the raiding of his offices and homes. I wish initially to discuss the issue of the police involvement. I was rather surprised yesterday that the internal inquiry was partially leaked by the police. It seems to me that either the internal inquiry should remain internal until the case has been concluded—I would accept that—or it ought to be published in full so we can see its findings. For it to be selectively leaked by the Metropolitan police is another example of crassness by the current senior officers in that force. All I can say is that it is a merciful relief for my constituents that they live in the Thames Valley police force area, rather than here in London.
	Questions need to be raised if not now then in the near future—it is possible that they were raised in this internal review—as to why 20 anti-terrorist police officers were needed to raid the four separate offices, and why they took away computers and mobile phones, which must have affected my hon. Friend's work and was in breach of data protection and of the very special relationship we all have with our constituents. This was most unsatisfactory.

Keith Vaz: The right hon. Gentleman is right to raise these points. May I tell him that both the Home Secretary and the Metropolitan police have agreed to give evidence to the Home Affairs Committee's inquiry into this matter, which will start on 20 January?

Andrew MacKay: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for that. We will all follow his inquiry very closely.
	On the involvement of senior police officers in the Met, I hope I am not being too cruel, but what keep coming back to me are the words of Alan Clark when he was referring to the generals in the first world war and the wonderful soldiers in the trenches, because our ordinary police officers risking their lives and well-being on the streets of London daily are "lions led by donkeys". I very much hope that there will be major changes at the top of the Metropolitan police force.
	We must address the issue of how the House authorities dealt with this matter. It is clearly highly unsatisfactory that the police were allowed to raid the office of my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford without a warrant and that insufficient questions were asked. I passionately believe that not only must Members of Parliament not be above the law, but we must be treated exactly the same as all our constituents. However, it is important that, in such cases, the House authorities—the Speaker, the Serjeant at Arms, the Clerk and others—satisfy themselves first that there is a case to answer and that any action is not in breach of the long-standing tradition that protects our constituents' confidentiality in this House.
	Clearly, that did not happen in this case and an investigation needs to take place. In his original statement on the day of the state opening, the Speaker rightly agreed with me and tried to set in motion a process to enable such an inquiry. It is shameful and deeply regrettable—I do not believe this was anything to do with the Leader of the House or her deputy, because I think they were leant on by the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary—that the motion that was tabled did not set up a Committee in the way that the Speaker wanted and the rest of the House expected.
	We all know that, these days, the Standards and Privileges Committee does not have a Government majority, and nor should it. It is equally plain that although a Committee of the House or, for that matter, a departmental Select Committee should reflect the balance of the parties in the House, that should not be the case on something as important as this. That is why when it came to vote for the Committee as set out in the motion, those on the Conservative, Liberal Democrat and nationalist Benches rightly voted against, why so many Labour Members either joined us or abstained and why the majority was so minute.
	The second reason for the minute majority was simply that the Committee was not going to meet, except to adjourn immediately after it had appointed a Chair, and that was quite wrong. The Committee should be carrying out this investigation. Where do we go from here? Clearly, the Speaker's Committee is dead and buried, unless the Government change their mind—I am not holding my breath, and I do not expect the Deputy Leader of the House to say in his winding-up speech that they are going to change their mind. So the only way forward is to refer this matter to the Standards and Privileges Committee. I hope that that will happen as soon as the House returns, so that the Committee can look into all these matters.
	The third aspect to the arrest of my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford is, of course, ministerial involvement and responsibility. It is abundantly clear that what was leaked to him embarrassed the Government but was not a matter of national security. It is deeply regrettable that the Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, noisily abetted by among others the Under-Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington, (Mr. Simon), led a slur, a smear and what, outside this place, would clearly be a potential slander against my hon. Friend, suggesting that something much more serious was involved and that a major security breach had taken place.
	If that were the case, is it not a little odd that the so-called whistleblower was arrested on one day, but it was not until 13 days later that police actually turned up here and raided my hon. Friend's office, and arrested him in his constituency? I notice that it has now all been quietly dropped and forgotten, but what a minority of Ministers did was nasty, unpleasant and wrong and I am sure that it embarrassed Labour Members as much as it annoyed us.
	On the subject of the whistleblower, let me make it clear that except in the most exceptional circumstances public servants should not leak information to politicians, journalists or anyone else. When it is not a matter of national security, a full internal inquiry should be carried out in the Department and, in a serious case, if the culprit is found, he or she should be dismissed without any compensation. That should have happened in this case. For some reason, it did not, and we ended up with this heavy-handed police action.
	I am confused about the Home Secretary's role in this matter. We have taken advice from the last two Conservative Home Secretaries, my right hon. and learned Friends the Members for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) and for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard), who are very distinguished. They both said unequivocally that if they had been Home Secretary, they would have expected to be told if a Member of Parliament was to be arrested and his office raided. They said that, by any chance they were not told, heads would have rolled. They have been somewhat backed up by the right hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (John Reid), who intervened on the Home Secretary a couple of weeks ago to say that he would not have been so placid if he had been told after the event. Well, all of us who know the right hon. Gentleman know that he is many things, but placid is not one of them. We can just imagine what would have happened if he had been Home Secretary and had learnt about what happened only afterwards.
	The Home Secretary's role is unfortunate. We have to accept, because she is a right hon. Member, that she has told the truth and she did not know. That puts her in a difficult position, because the question is why she did not know. Furthermore, why did she not do anything about it afterwards? Strangely, it appears that the Cabinet Office knew rather more, and the Minister for the Cabinet Office was rather more involved. That raises many interesting questions for the inquiry and, possibly, the Select Committee. Indeed, there will be more than one Select Committee looking at this matter, because the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright) has suggested that the Public Administration Committee will also inquire into the events.
	My second point again involves the Home Secretary who, of all Ministers, has had the worst war in the last few months. She is clearly in great difficulties. Here I link in with the hon. Member for Weaver Vale, who was right to apologise. If Gwyneth Dunwoody had been sitting in her customary seat in the corner, she would have enjoyed and appreciated the apology. Why could not the Home Secretary bring herself to apologise, when being cross-examined earlier this week about why Sir Michael Scholar had been so critical of the release of statistics on knife crime that were incomplete and immature? If she had done so, she would have gained huge respect on both sides of the House, because we all make mistakes. I have always found that if people apologise, they are forgiven by every reasonable person.
	It is an immensely serious issue. Sir Michael Scholar was appointed by the Governmentit was a good appointment and it is right that we should have such a positionas the watchdog on statistics. I am sure that I do not need to remind you, Madam Deputy Speaker, that he is also an ex-permanent secretary at the Home Office. He knows what is going on from back to front. We saw that gentle, rather academic, scholarly face on our television news absolutely furious at how the statistics had been manipulated. We cannot help but feel that again it was not the placid Home Secretary's direct fault, and so we go back to Downing street and the Cabinet Office.
	One can imagine some bright young thing who hopes one day to sit on the Government or Opposition Benches thinking, Now, the Prime Minister has had this knife crime summit in his diary for a few days. Wouldn't it be good to give him some really good statistics to show that it has all been sorted out? That was wrong. It should not have happened and people such as the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary should apologise and ensure that that bright young thing spends a little more time learning the way the world works. What happened was deeply regrettable.
	Thirdly, as my right hon. Friend the Member for West Derbyshire (Mr. McLoughlin) rightly pointed out, it is a disgrace that we have not had a statement on Equitable Life. I made that point to the Chancellor earlier today, so I shall not dwell on it.
	It is desperately important that we continue to have more debates on the economy, particularly when the Minister for the Olympics has made it clearI think that she is rightthat this is the worst recession we have ever known. We need to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer just why it is not the Government's fault. If the markets have decided, due to the reduction of the pound against the dollar and the euro, they have clearly got it right.
	I end by wishing you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and all staff here a very happy Christmas

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. The right hon. Gentleman's time is up.

Shona McIsaac: I wish to begin by putting on the record the fact that this week marks the 90th anniversary of women being able to vote in a general election, and it is also the 90th anniversary of women being able to stand for Parliament. Seventeen women stood for election on 14 December 1918. Only one was successful, and that was Countess Constance Markievicz, so she never took her seat.
	The second woman to be elected, of course, was Viscountess Astor, who was elected in a by-election, but today I want to pay tribute to Margaret Wintringham, who was elected in 1921. She was the third woman to be elected and the second to take her seat, as well as the first Liberal woman and the first British-born woman to be elected. She was also the first woman who was actually involved in the suffrage movement to be elected. She represented the Louth constituency, which at the time included the southern section of the current Cleethorpes constituency. I pay tribute to her and all those pioneering women, because without their hard work I would not be able to stand here today and discuss serious issues before we rise for the recess.
	First, I want to talk about the death of Lance Corporal Mathew Ford. He was sadly killed in Helmand province on 15 January 2007. His name has now been inscribed on the war memorial in the town of Immingham, where he was born and where his mother still lives. His name joins those of those who died in the first and second world wars.
	I want to talk about Mathew today because we have recently had the inquest into his death, and his family have come away none the wiser. Outside Cleethorpes town hall, his mother said that from the day he died, she has not known what happened to him. She does not know why his body was left on the ground. She does not know why he was shot. She does not know who shot him. She hoped to find out from the inquest what happened, and sadly she feels that all those questions remain unanswered. There were discrepancies between the findings of the Royal Navy board of inquiry after Mathew's death and issues raised at the inquest. There was a great deal of conflicting evidence, and I feel that we owe our troops, and Mathew Ford's family, much more than that.
	I hope that my hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House will help me to arrange a meeting between Mathew's mother and Ministers, so that she can raise her concerns about the conduct of the board of inquiry investigation. Such a meeting would also enable her to discuss some of the issues that were not investigated at the subsequent inquest. The details are very distressing, and I shall not go into them today, but I repeat that we owe it to the families of those who lose their lives serving this country to look into such matters.
	The next serious issue that I want to raise today concerns the rates paid by companies operating in Britain's ports, which affects some 700 companies around the UK. In a nutshell, those companies have received demands to pay their business rates backdated to 2005. The sums involved are incredibly large as a result, but the crucial factor is that since 2005 the companies have been paying their rates along with their rents directly to port operators, such as Associated British Ports. That means that they are being asked to pay double, which they believeI agree with themis grossly unfair. Some firms have gone under already because of the mess with the rates. The proposed solution is that companies do not pay the increased rates until 2010. That solution is not newit has been used in the past, with orders being put through this House postponing the immediate implementation of rate revaluations, and I hope that a similar mechanism can be adopted in this instance.
	Many hon. Members attended Monday's very successful lobby on the matter in the House, but I worry for the future of the 700 companies if we do not come up with a solution. I hope that Ministers will meet some of the operators involved, and hon. Members have already lobbied my right hon. Friend the Minister for Local Government. We have also seen the Prime Minister, and at that meeting we stressed the seriousness of the problem and the large number of firms that are affected. I want Ministers to look at the real problems that the firms are facing by meeting representatives of some of them directly. I hope that they will also look at the possibility of putting through the House an order that would postpone the increased levy until 2010. To be fair to them, the Government have made some very helpful suggestions, but I fear that they will not be enough to prevent some firms going under.
	The next matter that I want to deal with today is more positivecompensation for former distant-water trawlermen who lost their livelihoods as a result of the cod wars. I have brought the matter up in these debates over the years. We have heard a lot about compensation for miners, for example, but a great many people lost their livelihoods after the cod wars.
	The Government introduced a compensation scheme in 2000, but a serious loophole in the rules meant that thousands of men did not receive any moneythey may have had a break in service of more than 12 weeks that rendered them ineligible to receive compensation. I thank the Minister for Employment Relations and Postal Affairs, who on Thursday last week announced that a new scheme will be devised in the new year that does not include that serious loophole. As a result, many of my constituents who were never compensated following the loss of their livelihood will receive compensation. It has taken a long time to get to this stage, and talking about former distant-water trawlermen is very much a minority sport in this House. In debates such as this, we can raise important issues for our constituents, which has enabled me to raise this issue and finally have it resolved.
	The Secretary of State made an announcement yesterday about some of the measures being introduced following the serious floods. Hull, which is across the River Humber from my constituency, always gets the most attention when we talk about the floods, but that rain that fell on Hull fell just as heavily on the other side of the river, and many hundreds of my constituents were affected. I hope that we can move swiftly to implement some of the measures that my right hon. Friend mentioned yesterday, such as enabling individual householders to obtain grants for flood boards, for example, or special devices that can cover air bricks to stop water entering properties. My constituents are already inquiring about that, and I hope that we get the details of those grant schemes very soon.
	The final issue that I want to bring before the House is one of those You couldn't make it up issues. It relates to rubbish collection in North East Lincolnshire and North Lincolnshire, two neighbouring authorities across which my constituency happens to cut. In its eagerness to tell residents when their Christmas refuse would be collected, North East Lincolnshire decided to go on a sort of land grab and delivered its leaflets in the neighbouring authority. About 1,000 homes in North Lincolnshire were kindly given the refuse collection dates for the neighbouring authority.
	As hon. Members can imagine, the phones were red hot. People wondered why on earth their refuse collections were being completely and utterly changed. Finally, I had to ask one person who the letter was from. They said, Well, it is from the councilNorth East Lincolnshire council. I said, You live in North Lincolnshire council. Now North Lincolnshire is having to re-leaflet the households to tell them that the arrangements have not totally changed. A cost has been put on one authority by another authority. I hope that North East Lincolnshire council will do the decent thing, put its hands up, say sorry and at least pay the cost of rectifying its mistake.
	Finallybefore Opposition Members leap up to take part in the debateI wish every Member of the House a restful Christmas. We do not usually get many days off to rest. I also hope that everyone who works for us, all the people who work in the House and all our constituents have a restful Christmas.

ROYAL ASSENT

Madam Deputy Speaker: I have to notify the House, in accordance with the Royal Assent Act 1967, that the Queen has signified her Royal Assent to the following Act:
	Consolidated Fund Act 2008

Christmas Adjournment

Debate resumed.

Angela Browning: Although the right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) is no longer in the Chamber, I do not want to disappoint him. I welcome all Members to my beautiful constituency in Devon, where when they have feasted at home, they will find the moors and the beaches are wonderful places to walk off all the extra chocolate that we have been warned about.

Ian Gibson: There are no trains.

Angela Browning: I shall not talk about the trains because I want to talk about a problem we have with the M5, which goes through the middle of my constituency. Junction 28, at the small town of Cullompton, was part of the original motorway, but over the years services have been developed on the eastbound carriageway and it is now an official motorway services area. Unfortunately, the infrastructure of the motorway exit does not match up to what one would normally expect to find on the exit to a services area. There is a small mini-roundabout at the top of the slip road and when articulated lorries in particular come off the motorway at that point, they swing across to the other laneI hope I am not putting people off coming to Devonto such an extent that one lane of the slip road has had to be closed.
	I have held two meetings with Mid Devon district council, the Highways Agency and Devon county council and, more recently, on 1 December we met the regional development agency. It is obvious to anybody who uses that exit and that junction that its development over the years has outstripped the original infrastructure. Something significant needs to be done, not only to make the junction safer but to cope with the traffic.
	There is obviously an impact on the town of Cullompton, which is right on the junction. It is not one of those towns that is miles from the motorway. As motorists leave the junction, they go straight on to Station road and are in the heart of the town within a minute. The development of the town and the growth of its facilities are being seriously restricted, because the motorway junction is significant for access to the town centre and also because there is a problem with traffic leaving the motorway to access the services.
	I am concerned that, in discussions with the various agencies, we have had great difficulty in persuading them, not that they should do something about the problem tomorrow but that they should plan and factor into the development of the motorway structure a radically different system to accommodate the changing needs. However, we have been met with opposition. It is true that the Highways Agency may consider some minor changes, because it realises that there is an immediate problem, but we were told that one of the reasons why nothing significant could be done was that the junction was at a small Devon town. If we were adjacent to a large city, we would probably have funding for the changes. It is particularly galling that decisions about important motorway junctions are based not on need but on something called a spatial strategya plan not drawn up by the local people who use the junction and understand the priorities of the town or that part of the motorway, but by the regional development agency and, in particular, the regional assembly. Those bodies are unelected and unaccountable, yet they seem to have all the say about how money is spent and where the priorities for development and growth should be. It is yet another example of how rural areaseven a motorway junction in the middle of a rural areaand small towns lose out, because third parties, miles away from where we live, take significant decisions about what should or should not happen.
	If the decisions had been left to Cullompton town council, Mid Devon district council and local people and they could have had a say in what happened in their area, it would be a different matter. I hope that the Deputy Leader of the House will take on board what I am saying. Quite frankly, we must ask whether those bodiesthe RDAs and regional assembliesare really serving all the community that they have been given power over, or whether they are just selective about those interests that they think are more important. We talk about local decision making, but they do not think locally; they do not act locally.
	I shall move on to issues that affect elderly peopleI declare an interest. [Hon. Members: No.] We have already heard that there was general disappointment in the House about the reply that the Leader of the House gave yesterday to the question on the 10 per cent. interest on savings that is deemed to apply to benefits. That particularly affects elderly people who want to obtain pension credit and other important benefits that affect people who are at the margins of being eligible to apply for benefits. There is a significant change of circumstances, with interest rates dropping. I should like to add my support to those Members who have already said that the Government should urgently consider this matter. As has been said, people who have saved and people who rely on sometimes quite small amounts of investment income from their building society and bank accounts that are really important to their general well-being and their household budgets now find that that money is not there. I am really quite worried when people laughingly say, Oh well, the only place to keep your money these days is under the bed. Frankly, that is very worrying, but it is something that we shall face, particularly if interest rates go down to zero, which is not impossible. I hope that the Government will think again about that.
	I should also like to refer to the help that the Government are giving to people who qualify for help with insulation. I have heard the Prime Minister talk about helping elderly people with money to help not just with fuel, but with insulating and improving their homes. I got an e-mail this week from a constituent who wrote:
	My 'free' home insulationcavity walls and loftwas arranged for 11th December but postponed indefinitely, at two days' notice, due to lack of funding. Is this yet another example of a splendid initiative by HMG that has been inadequately implemented and funded? At the age of 76, this sort of disappointment is very difficult to take, without getting depressed.
	I am pleased to report to the House that it looks as though that situation will be resolved for that gentleman, but what is the problem with that policy, which has been spoken about frequently by the Prime Minister personally? We are now in December, before we have even reached the hardest months of the winter, and contracts that were being implemented are suddenly stopped in their tracks at two days' notice. I really do not understand why that should be, and I wonder whether the Deputy Leader of the House would be good enough to look at that and get back to me.
	I should also like the Deputy Leader of the House to take up another issue with the appropriate Minister. I have tried to raise it with the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change. I raised it with the former Energy Minister earlier in the year, and it took eight months to get a reply, despite several promptings. I am still waiting for a reply to a request that I made in November to the current Energy Minister.
	There is something called the Gas Act 1986, in which protection was given to people who had to buy their gas from their landlords. That protection was put in place so that landlords could not exploit their tenants. Several people in my constituency live in park homes, and some of them have to buy their gas through their landlords. They also buy liquefied petroleum gas. I understand that the protection given to people who buy gas does not cover such fuel, which has been provided by landlords more recently, as it was not included in the Gas Act 1986, because it is an oil-based product. Unless we can assist people who have to buy their fuel through third partiesand I do mean have toand cannot shop around in the marketplace to get the best deal, they will be sitting ducks if landlords wish to exploit them.
	Measures should be introduced; the Government could either identify an existing Bill to which they could be added, or could add them to an appropriate Bill in the next couple of months. It is wrong that landlords can exploit people through the resale of fuel, which is so important to people. There are some very nice park homes in my constituency, but people who live in park homes are, almost by definition, not the wealthiest people. They are predominantly older people from an older generation. I hope that the Deputy Leader of the House will give the issue serious consideration.

Jo Swinson: Will the hon. Lady give way?

Angela Browning: I will not, if the hon. Lady does not mind, because I realise that not everybody will get to contribute if I do not keep my remarks brief.
	I want to make one more quick point. It is about generic prescribing. I had a letter from a young man who has to take drugs for his epilepsy every day. He pointed out to me that he has great difficulty because of generic prescribing. When he goes to get his repeat prescription, it is not always the same drug, although chemically, I am told, it should be. His body has got used to one particular compilation of drugs. He is concerned that the way in which the drugs are put together means that he has difficulty moving from one brand to another, although technically the drug is the same.
	I take prescribed drugs, and will have to do so for the rest of my life. I take one of the drugs as a tablet twice a day, which is very simple, but recently I noticed that I have got a different sort of drugthese are all generic drugsand I was told to take it an hour before I eat. I was presented with a problem; I thought, Does that mean I've got to wake up at 6 o'clock to take the drug, go back to sleep for an hour, and then get up and have breakfast? These things are really quite difficult. Of course, not everybody reads all the small print on those little boxes of medication. I always do.
	Will the Minister be good enough to have a word with the Department of Health about the issue? I am not suggesting that there are big differences in what is prescribed, but sometimes there are significant differences that are of concern to people for whom it is important, as far as their medical condition is concerned, to take the same medication at the same time each day. May I wish everybody in the HouseMembers, staff and officersa very happy Christmas? And don't forgetcome to Devon for the new year.

Several hon. Members: rose

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I am hoping that everybody who wishes to contribute to the debate will be able to do so. I have had my eye on the clock, and after the next speaker, the time limit on speeches will be reduced to 10 minutes. That way, I hope that everybody will be able to make their contribution.

Ian Gibson: I will support the cause and be very brief, Madam Deputy Speaker. I want to weave my talk around a document that has just been produced by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, a creative manoeuvre of the Government's from early on in the 1997 period. The document's title is Attacking the Recession: How Innovation Can Fight the Downturn. It points out that many countries have historically got out of recessionrecessions come and goby playing to their strengths. It mentions Finland, Japan and other countries. It talks about the strengths of economiesthe parts that are movingand argues that such considerations can give people a chance to develop new ideas, innovations and new ways of thinking. Perhaps we need to emphasise that a little more, with regard to what we are doing creatively.
	Now for a sharp contrast: the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr. Bacon), who is in the Chamber, will know that I always mention railways, because I have a real fetish about the Norwich to London rail line. He has worked with me on the issue. That rail line has everything that the document tries to replace. It suffers from absolute defeatism; it cuts jobs; it closes Delia Smith-approved restaurant carsthere is not much better than thoseand it gives every excuse for lateness, from foxes on the line to cars on the line. Anyone who wants an exciting journey from Norwich should get a train on that line. It will stop outside the emerging Olympic village, which can be seen growing in the time that the train sits there. That is an amazing feature; I am sure that many young people would like to see how buildings can be stuck up at that rate. Blow me, but when the Princess came to Norwich on Monday, she was late as well. Once we get the royals on our side, we might make some progress.
	Some of us have been trying to get the line repaired for some time. If there is snow, the line gets paralysed for days. This country invented the train, yet here we are still with these problems. For the next three years at weekends we will again have to get on buseswe have already had three years of getting buses on Saturday mornings or Sundays and so on. Many people who work or study in London come up to Norfolk and are subjected to all that.
	Some of us have also fought for the dualling of the A11. Thanks to the Government, it looks as though it will happen sooner rather than later; the last few miles are about to be done. The hon. Member for South Norfolk has given up on the trains; he now takes his car, and the dual carriageway will be ready for him before the trains are in order.
	We are trying to do all these things in a country where the train is absolutely essential. It can be pleasant and fun, and when it works it really works. Restaurant cars can be very conducive to good interactions between people. In general, we need to bite the bullet on the train network in this country and make it really fit for purpose. Many construction and engineering jobs would come too, and that would be part and parcel of taking our country forward in the current situation. Furthermore, if National Express and the rail network do not get it together, my solution, as always, would be to renationalise the railways. The cry for that will grow and grow. We will get to the point reached in New Zealand, where the Labour party Government nationalised the railway to the advantage of the railway system, which improved under former Prime Minister Helen Clark. I think that in this country we will also move that way pretty sharply and shortly.
	We often hear about boom and bust. Capitalism is all about boom and bust; there is no use in kidding ourselvesit booms and busts, and that is just one of its features. The odd green shoots will be on the way as we go through this recession, and perhaps a general election will move things along. We have to keep nagging the Government to make sure that we build on our strengths and reshape our futures, not only in the next six months but in the next five to 10 yearswe have to have our eyes on that period as well.
	Finally, I turn to Norwich and Norfolk in the context of looking ahead and fighting for a strategy to develop the county's strengths. We need to be much more proactive. For example, as the document that I mentioned clearly states, the growth in the financial realm will probably decrease. Norwich used to be all about Norwich Unionpeople intermarried and all got jobs there, but things have changed. The financial sector has moved and it will move more.
	What are the chances of getting something going in my constituency's part of the world? What strengths do we have that will bring us out of the recession even faster? Norwich has a famous research park, which includes the university of East Anglia, the Norfolk and Norwich hospital and three independent institutesthe John Innes centre, the Institute of Food Research and the Sainsbury laboratory. One should not laugh, but the John Innes centre has produced purple tomatoes. They are genetically modifiedwe may have an argument about that, and I am sure that the issue will come up again. The tomatoes are full of anthocyanins. They are good for the health, allegedly. How do I know? When they were tried on mice, the mice lived longer. It will not be long before we will be trying them out on the Opposition. I shall bring some down and slip them into their heavy diets, because I know that their Front Benchers are worried about obesity.

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown: Let me inform the hon. Gentleman and the House that my sister, who, like him, is a GP, has fed me some of these purple tomatoes, and they are delicious.

Ian Gibson: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will now be invited to interact with the people there. Who knows? There may be a package on its way to him at this moment.
	In the field of biotechnology, many exciting things are happening in Norwich, as they are across the country. It is the coming science. As the Minister for Science and Innovation in the other place, who made his name in biotechnology, has said, this part of the world, and the United Kingdom in general, is the arena where things are really going to happen. Another example is broccoli, which has chemicals called sulforophane. Using conventional plant-breeding methods, broccoli can be increased to super-broccoli status by having more of those chemicals. That has been shown in many cases to reduce rates of cancer. As Members will know, we have here a very successful and powerful all-party cancer group. Ministers come to see us, and we have a day called Britain Against Cancer. That is now reflected in Norfolk. Patient groups attended, and we had tremendous support from right across the county. The interesting thing was that no more money was needed. We discussed the interactions between people and the innovatory ways in which they were going to deliver the servicesand blow me, one week later the local hospital delivered some of them. That may have been going to happen anyway, as these things do. However, things are increasingly moving back to the localities, and we should try to reflect some of the activities that we have learned about in this place down at the local level.
	The university of East Anglia is famous for its creative writing department, with Malcolm Bradbury, Ian McEwanthe names go on and on. It has the Tyndall centre for climate change research, which is a world leader in that field. An organisation called Carbon Reduction, or C-Red, is interacting with industry to help and advise it. The university interacts with local industry in advising people about their energy needs and so on. It has helped Adnams, the great brewery. My hon. Friend the Member for Selby (Mr. Grogan) has left the Chamber now, but we are trying to get Adnams beer into the House. It is difficult because it is a big name. Adnams has created the world's first carbon-neutral beer. I do not know what it does for hangovers, but the fact that it is carbon neutral is quite a success.
	As for an engineering school, UAE does not have one. About 2 miles down the road, there is a Lotus factory that gets involved in making cars, engineers work there, and there is Formula 1 and Snetterton race track. Young people could be stimulated to take an interest in engineering at a time when this country is crying out for engineers. We need to interact at that level with universities. If we can get that interaction with research institutes, communities and the health service, we can get it right across the board. Part of the problem with universities is that they are hooked into the research assessment exercise, the results of which come out today. Their whole lives are taken up with trying to survive a rigorous assessment system.
	We have all this biotechnological development going on in that part of the world. We have low-carbon technologies coming along, and health care products. With some initiative, we could ensure that travel, the railways and tourism expand at the same time and we become the regional hub. The social issues are part and parcel of that, and many initiatives are going on. There are groups such as Transition Norwich, where 500 people will come along to a meeting in a big hall on a Wednesday night to discuss how they can get involved with their environment and their community by having their own allotments or keeping bees. So there is a grass-roots feeling that can be tapped and I believe that that sort of community spiritwith people interacting and creating thingscan sort out many problems. The local food produce schemes will be a big thing.
	Let us get the railways right and get green technology going. Broadband access has been mentionedwe still do not have a national fibre-optic cable network, and that needs to be achieved. We need a human capital strategy, whereby we work with young people, who perhaps do not go to university for three or four years, and enable them to duck out of education and come back into it. All those novel ideas exist, and we need a regional innovation strategy. However, I do not know who will deliver it.
	Norfolk is by the sea and it is blowy, but there is, as yet, no wave energy of which I am aware. There is some wind energy, and talk of turbines in the North sea and so on, but we need to get going and get zippy, and interact with firms that can build such things, as well as with other countries.
	A co-ordinated approach is the way forward. We need it for the many young people who want to set up businesses. The document that I mentioned at the outset is all about building on the strength of the creativity of our young people. Some will be writers, some will be engineers, some will be scientists and othersvery fewwill be politicians. However, at the end of the day, we must get resources from the organisations that work in the relevant parts of the country to push the creativity that exists. It is our strength and will be a major feature of getting out of the recession.

Jo Swinson: Like many hon. Members, I had the experience of attending a school nativity play last week. It was at Killermont primary school in my constituency and it was delightful. It brings home the spirit of Christmas, which is an especially exciting time for children.
	However, it is important to remember that, behind the fairy lights, Christmas carols and jubilation, many people carry great worriesespecially financial worries in the current economic climateon their shoulders at this time of year. It is especially galling when Government incompetence causes those financial worries. I know that most Members of Parliament encounter many Child Support Agency cases in which the CSA has been unable to enforce judgments and make parents who do not have care of their children pay for their maintenance.
	Recently, I came across a case in which the ex-husband had made significant maintenance payments because he earned a good salary, but my constituent was left on benefits and did not know that the payments were being made. That went on for several years, and she found out only through a freedom of information request. If she could have got the payments to which she was entitled for her and her children, she would have been in a position to take on part-time work and make pension contributions, and her financial situation would be entirely different. That is an example of the appalling mess into which the CSA gets.
	Another example of Government incompetence is the tax credit system. My constituent Mr. MacMillan did not confirm his income in time and consequently was presented with a bill for more than 8,000 to repay. Suddenly getting a letter through the door demanding such a sum is terrifying for people on tax credits. The figure has thankfully been reduced to 4,000, but it is still a significant sum. Let us remember that my constituent was entitled to the money, and that the position arose because of one error of not confirming his income in time. That is an incredibly harsh way in which to treat individuals, especially when the tax credit system gets so many things wrong through overpayments or underpayments. I have lost count of the constituents who tell me that they wish they had never applied for tax credits.
	Kaupthing Isle of Man is another financial issue that worries many constituents. Many had invested, sometimes through UK companies, and had no idea that their money had been taken offshore, but they now stand to lose significant sums. On 13 November, the Leader of the House said:
	I shall raise it with my colleagues in the Treasury to establish whether a written ministerial statement is necessary in respect of those with deposits in Isle of Man financial institutions.[ Official Report, 13 November 2008; Vol. 482 c. 962.]
	No written statement has yet been made, so I wonder whether the Deputy Leader of the House will give us an update when he sums up. Will there be a Treasury statement? What are the Government doing to press the Icelandic Government to honour their commitments and compensate those who are affected?
	In Treasury questions, I raised the depressing issue of unemployment and the 85 jobs going from Flexible Ducting in my constituency. Woolworths also employs more than 30 people in Kirkintilloch in my constituency. The Government could take a leaf out of President-elect Obama's book, by investing in a green jobs revolution. They should also put much more investment into installation for homes, which would cut energy bills and help people to save money. We need to use this opportunity to create those jobs and help people to cut their bills.
	It is not only the national Government who should be making their mark; it is local government as well, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Burstow) pointed out. His councilalong with Islington and, I am sure, others as wellhas reduced the payment times for small and medium-sized businesses in its area to just 10 days. I very much hope that my local council will adopt such a policy. Indeed, I wrote to it earlier this month asking it to do so, but sadly there has been no response so far. The urgency of the situation means that action is required now from local authorities, and I hope that East Dunbartonshire council will act to do this. Other councils have shown that it is possible, and it is an essential way of assisting businesses during the economic downturn.
	I want to turn to an issue of great concern to a particular town in my constituency. The Low Moss area of Bishopbriggs, one of the biggest towns in my constituency, was chosen as a temporary site for a prison more than 40 years ago. The term  temporary is an interesting one because, 40 years later, the prison is still there. Recently, against the wishes of the local community and the local council, the Scottish Government decided to build a new prison facility there. Despite the fact that it has been called Low Moss prison for 40 years, we have now discovered that, to add insult to injury, the Scottish Government and the Scottish Prison Service are now planning to call the new facility Bishopbriggs prison. Indeed, they have confirmed to me in writing that HMP Bishopbriggs is its working title. No reason has been given for this change.
	Bishopbriggs is a cheerful and friendly town with a great community spirit. It has produced such esteemed figures as the politician Thomas Muir of Huntershill and, more recently, the talented musician, Amy Macdonald. Understandably, the people of the town do not want the first thing that people think of when they hear the name Bishopbriggs to be a prison. I have started a petition against the name change, and hundreds of people have already signed it. The strength of local feeling could not be clearer: the name HMP Bishopbriggs simply must be dropped.
	I want to talk about the possibility of speeding up Parliament's entry into the 21st century. I know that the Deputy Leader of the House has taken an interest in online matters. Indeed, I remember that, before his promotion to the Government, he was often seen asking questions in business questions to the Leader of the House about whether we should have more e-tabling of signatures for early-day motions and such like. More and more MPs are now using the internet to connect better with their constituents, and Parliament should also embrace this new technology, whether through social networking sites such as Facebook, Bebo and MySpace, or through interactive forums, encouraging comments on websites, podcasts, video logsknown as v-logs, they are small videos that can be uploaded to sites such as YouTubeor, indeed, a new website launched today called tweetminster.co.uk. It aggregates all the mini-blogs or twitters of those MPs who twitter regularly. I declare an interest, as one of the five MPs identified as those who use this service. The others are the hon. Members for Loughborough (Mr. Reed), for West Bromwich, East (Mr. Watson) and for Welwyn Hatfield (Grant Shapps), and my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Lynne Featherstone). This is an example of a way of connecting more immediately with our constituents, and I would encourage other hon. Members to make full use of the advantages that the internet offers, particularly in relation to the younger audience, who would not normally declare a huge interest in politics.
	I have noticed some reticence in the House, however, and I hope that the Deputy Leader of the House will be able to press this issue forward. I have found it difficult to make progress on a couple of issues in a particular. One is the campaign that I have been running to persuade the House authorities to allow Membersand, indeed, members of the publicto upload clips of what happens in the Chamber on to sites such as YouTube. At the moment, we are allowed to upload them on to our own websites, which is helpful in some ways, but we do not have the opportunities that other sites afford, such as forwarding and sharing these clips easily between like-minded people; posting them on to social networking sites; and rating them and commenting on them so that particularly popular clips can be flagged up through the sites for a wider audience.
	Yes, most people can watch the BBC Parliament channel, but they probably do not do so. They see Prime Minister's questions on television, and I have to say that I shudder to think of their response to it, because I do not think that it portrays the House at its best. If perhaps little nuggets of this House's holding the Government to account by asking questions or of various other parts of parliamentary business could be distributed among like-minded groups and individuals, I think that it would be a great advantage for democracy. I know the Administration Committee is looking into this and I hope that the Deputy Leader of the House will also take it up.
	I also urge the Deputy Leader of the House to take up the Free our Bills campaign. My early-day motion 221 has been signed by 72 Members so far. It is intended to change the way in which we tag legislation electronically to make it easier for people to follow where we are in the Bill process and make comments, which can only increase people's engagement.
	Finally, I echo the thanks of other Members to the staff of this House and to those working hard in our constituencies. I hope that the House will allow me a little indulgence to say a special thank you to my researcher, Nick Hutton, who has been a member of my staff since I was elected three and a half years ago. I have to say that he is an absolute star, but sadly he will be leaving in the new year to take up a new job. He will be greatly missed.
	Merry Christmas to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to everyone in Parliament.

John McDonnell: In these debates, Madam Deputy Speaker, our whole life almost passes in front of us, but I want to concentrate on a serious issue that has come up in my constituency about the care of the residents in the residential homes owned and managed by the company Southern Cross. The story goes back two years when I was approached by relatives of parents who lived in Southern Cross care homes in my constituency and across the London borough of Hillingdon.
	A range of concerns were raised, including poor standards of care and cleanliness in the homes, lack of staff, lack of management, poor diet and lack of stimulation. I heard anecdotes of elderly people slumped in their chairs while the television was blaring. I heard about lack of respect as well as lack of care, as elderly people were spoken to in a demeaning manner. I heard about hectoring and even a bullying atmosphere was described. Anxieties were expressed at that stage about the physical security of the elderly and about the heavy manhandling of elderly people.
	I took up individual complaints with the London borough of Hillingdon and the local primary care trust, but the frequency of the complaints worried me. In June 2006, I wrote to the then chief executive of the Hillingdon primary care trust to arrange a meeting with relatives to discuss the standards of care. We sat down and went through the issues together. I attended local meetings of the carers association and the Alzheimer's Society and listened to similar concerns.
	We were informed at the PCT meeting that our views would be listened to and fed back to the local council as well as the PCT itself. Despite that, I continued to receive in subsequent months individual complaints and expressions of concern about standards of care. I thus wrote to the director of social services at Hillingdon and to the chief executive of the Commission for Social Care Inspection. I enclosed a copy of a constituent's letter that outlined examples of the concerns.
	As I have said, I was still contacted too frequently by relatives of elderly people who express their concerns and I said at that stage that I was extremely worried that these people were vulnerable. I asked for the director's views on the standards of care, I told the commissioner that I was extremely worried and I suggested to the director of social services that we should have an independent review. I welcomed the commission's involvement and offered to meet Hillingdon council and the commission. I received no response from the London borough of Hillingdon, but I liaised with the commission to set up a meeting at the House of Commons at which relatives and representatives of the carers association could explain their concerns.
	We were told at that meeting that the Commission for Social Care Inspection would be inspecting Hillingdon in 2008 and that there would be an attempt to bring the inspection forward. At that stage at least, I thought that we were making some progress. I was relieved that we had at least engaged. The CSCI inspection took place in early 2008 and its report was published in March. It concluded:
	The London borough of Hillingdon's performance in safeguarding adults was poor...Quality assurance processes in relation to adult safeguarding were underdeveloped and there were some key weaknesses... Safeguarding recording practice was generally poor
	and it continued like that.
	Although the report is clearly damning on the issue of safeguarding the elderly, others as well as me found it fairly superficial. It offered a weak approach and it lacked a follow-through. The commission was too willing to accept excuses, unwilling to follow through improvements and unwilling to confront providers themselves with their weaknesses. Nevertheless, I thought that we were moving on again and were on the right path to raising standards. Six to nine months later, regrettably, constituents' complaints keep coming. The examples are just the same as before: lack of physical care, lack of nutrition and so forth. One person's father was losing weight yet the home did not even have the scales to measure it.
	Because of the lack of consistent improvement, I approached one of the local councillors, Councillor John Major, who has been assiduous in raising these issues. He approached the leader of the council. We suggested an informal meeting with relatives, the carers association and Age Concern to have a chat to ensure that the leader of the council understood the concerns. The leader of the council is the council's champion for the elderly. Unfortunately, he declined the meeting. I received a note from Councillor Major saying that the leader was discussing the matter with a fellow cabinet member. It appears that the meeting that was proposed as a way forward was not the way in which they wanted to deal with the situation. I was disappointed by that response.
	Having got nowhere in securing redress through the leader of the council, three weeks ago I met the chief executive of the Hillingdon primary care trust with my neighbour, the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall), and I raised the concerns at that meeting. In contrast to the council, the PCT provided me with a detailed briefing note on what was happening in the individual homes. We were informed at that point that all admissions to the homes had been suspended.
	As a result of one serious incident on 30 October, the police were called in. I will not mention individual homes because I do not want to worry my constituents any further, but in each of the homes at some stage admissions seem to have been halted by Hillingdon because of various concerns about the standards of care. There had been a litany of complaints throughout the year which had to be investigated, and when they had been investigated, further complaints arose. In one instance there were allegations that notices had been put up warning staff not to whistleblow to the Commission for Social Care Inspection.
	There seems to be a typical pattern of behaviour. When a complaint is made, the company reacts by putting in a manager from another home. Intensive efforts are made to improve the standard of care. The improvements last a few months and the manager is pulled out. At the same time, the home where the manager worked previously deteriorates. The cycle has been going on year after year. While I was being briefed by the primary care trust, local Councillors Anthony Way and John Major insisted on a briefing from council officers. That reiterated exactly the same complaintslack of staff, lack of training, lack of record keeping, lack of respect for the elderly, health care issues and lack of communication throughout.
	The question for me is why the situation of continuous complaints has been allowed to happen, with the evident risk to elderly people. One reason, I have discovered, is that the council did not have the staff in place to commission and monitor the contracts awarded to Southern Cross. I have had sight of a letter from a council officer that confirms that there should have been five staff in place. Last year there was only one. The council recruited four staff, but two of those took redundancy, so there are only two members of staff. The council did not have the staff to monitor the contracts, find out what was going on, decide on appropriate action and take that action.
	A second reason is that the council let the contract for residential care for the elderly on such a scale to Southern Cross over a 10-year period that Southern Cross has a virtual monopoly in Hillingdon. The council closed down its own homes and has very little alternative accommodation in the private sector, so Southern Cross has the council over a barrel. Southern Cross has become one of the largest providers of care for the elderly in the country. It is ruthless in the pursuit of profits. To gain a market share, I believe it has introduced loss leaders and maximised its profits by cutting staff, cutting wages and failing to invest in the basic services of those establishments.
	I read a recent report in  The Times on Southern Cross standards, which was informed by numerous comments by employees and former employees confirming the report's headline, filth and abuse in care home. Earlier this year the company was on the point of financial collapse and I believe it made even more cuts in its service delivery. I pay tribute to the hard-working staff in those homes. They are underpaid and lacking in managerial support, yet they do their best in that environment.
	There is a third reason why the scandal has been allowed to persist for so long. It is the one that the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Burstow) mentioned: for too long, the needs of the elderly in our society have been ignored. They are swept to one side. The elderly do not count as much as others in our society. That must end. One small way in which we could demonstrate that they do count is by tackling Southern Cross in our local area, the London borough of Hillingdon, and nationally. I wrote 10 days ago to the Secretary of State for Health asking for Ministers to intervene as a matter of urgency in Southern Cross in the London borough of Hillingdon.
	I also think there is a need for a wider review of the way in which we treat and care for the elderly, however, particularly in the privatised sector. We cannot sit back and let elderly people be put at risk in this way. There has been case after case in my constituency of what I consider to be severe neglect, and as I said, the police have been called to one home to investigate the physical abuse of an elderly person by the staff.
	Members have mentioned the case of baby P, which has caused distress to the nation as well as throughout the House. I give this warning: unless we take decisive action fast on the care of the elderly and elderly care standards, we shall inevitably be faced with a granny P or a granddad P. It is coming; indeed, it may well have happened in our own area as a result of the activities of Southern Cross as a poor provider of residential care for the elderly. I urge my hon. Friend the Leader of the House to go to the Secretary of State for Health and say that this is an urgent matter that needs to be addressed locally and nationally.

John Randall: As always, it is a great privilege to follow my neighbour, the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell). What he has said is absolutely right. As soon as possible after Christmas, I shall try to arrange a meeting between us and the leader of the authority, and we will also take up the issue with the Department. We are all very concerned about the care of the elderly, and I am afraid it is true that all too often elderly people seem to be somewhat forgotten.
	According to today's headlines about the ambulance and health services, they are at a critical point. I want to pay tribute to the ambulance service, because only last week my mother, who is 89, was taken to hospital by ambulancethankfully, she is out of hospital now. I saw for myself the problems experienced by Hillingdon hospital, such as trolley waits. The ambulance personnel, for whom I have the highest regard, were having to wait with their charges until they could hand them over to the nursing staff, which meant long delays. While they were there, they could not be out doing what they wanted to do, and they were not taking breaks. I saw a variety of things that filled me with admiration for the work that they do, and, of course, for the staff of Hillingdon hospital.
	That experience also made me realise that, despite everything, there is still a long way to go in relation to care. Most of the people whom I happened to see in the hospital were elderly, and very frightened. Many of those who arrive there do not have relations or friends with them. The situation is very worrying, and we must look into it.
	When I was on the hospital site I met the chief executive, Mr. David McVittie. I have been very impressed by him on a number of occasions. He is always out there, walking the wards. As a retailer myself, I would describe him as a floorwalker. Staff members told me that he knew most of their names, which I considered very impressive. So it is a shame that, having said what a wonderful bloke he is, I must now say something that will irritate him slightly.
	Hillingdon hospital wants a rebuild. It is working towards that, and the Government are considering it. RAF Uxbridge is being sold off, and it would be a wonderful site on which to rebuild the hospital for not only my constituents but the whole borough of Hillingdon. In fact, it would be better for the constituents of the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington and of my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Hurd). We heard this week that a new college was to open in Uxbridge, with 500 nursing students. I cannot help feeling that the two establishments should be next to each other. May I suggest to the Deputy Leader of the Housewhom I welcome to his positionthat at some stage we should get the Department of Health and the Ministry of Defence together to discuss what I think is a wonderful opportunity? I have been told that it is not possible to use the RAF Uxbridge site for reasons involving foundation trust status and all sorts of interesting financial things, but I cannot help feeling that we must work around that.
	I want to say something about the RAF, because personnel from RAF Uxbridge and RAF Northolt are currently serving overseas. I am thinking of 32 Squadron in particular, but there are others serving in the Falklands, Turkey, the middle east, Afghanistan and Iraq. I pay tribute to them and their families.
	I was contacted recently by a wonderful serving warrant officer, who told me the one thing that he was concerned about while serving was the appalling state of accommodation at RAF Uxbridge. Principally because it is going to close down, there has not been much movement on improving it, but I am going to see itI have spoken to the relevant Minister, and he has given me permission to do so. I am sure that hon. Members will want to hear about the situation there, and it is to be hoped that something can be done, because it is appalling if, while members of the armed forces are serving abroad, often in dangerous operation areas, they are worrying about the conditions their families are living in. That is a very sad state of affairs.
	I welcomed the Prime Minister's announcement today on withdrawal from Iraq. As the Liberal Democrat Chief Whip, the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Burstow), is present, I wish to tell him that the tone of the response of his leader, the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Clegg), was regrettable. The right hon. Gentleman was not a Member of this House when we debated going into Iraq; many Members on both sides of the House voted against the war but it was a difficult decisionat the time, it was not black and white. The idea that the Conservative and Labour Members who voted for the war were being gung-ho is erroneous, and I think that the right hon. Gentleman might, on reflection, come to regret his tone.
	We have in our debate talked about uncertainties in many areas, and I must mention another one. My friend the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington would have mentioned it, but his speech was limited to 10 minutes. He wanted to discuss Southern Cross, so I shall mention the other issue on his behalf now. We hope to have the decision on Heathrow in January. It has been put off, but many people, not only in our constituencies but across west London, are again thinking this Christmas that next year they will be told that they have to leave their homes and that they have no future in their area.

John McDonnell: They will also be undertaking direct action training, just in case.

John Randall: I will not follow the hon. Gentleman down that line, although, as he knows, I have promised to stand in front of a bulldozer, and despite the entreaties of the right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz), I think that I should bulk up a bit to make sure it is a fair contest.
	Yesterday, I was able to have a little go at the Government about the reduction in VAT from the position of being a shop ownerand shop worker, too, in factso I will not reiterate why it is not a good idea. At this time of year, we always talk about the emergency services and pay tribute to their staff, which is perfectly right, but we should also pay tribute to shop workers, who will have to go out there from Boxing day onwards. I can say from personal experience that customers at sale time are not always the nicest, and as we are being told on the television to barter, it is actually quite an unpleasant experience and some people get quite aggressive. I pay tribute to all shop workers, and I ask Members, and all our constituents, to bear in mind that the person on the other side of the counter is a human being as well.
	However, so that I do not always get accused of being like Scrooge and being miserable and Victor Meldrew-likealthough I must admit that I said Scrooge was a disgrace, because he gave in at the endlet me say something on the jolly side of things. I went to a performance of Hot Mikado by Bishopshalt school. We all go to lots of such events, and it might be invidious to mention just one, but when we see how well children perform in such school productionsthey put everything into them, and give so much joy to themselves and many otherswe realise that it is all worth it, and that young people, apart from the tiny minority whom we mostly talk about here in this place, are a great tribute to their own generation.
	I have received some wonderful letters from pupils at Highfield primary school, who came to the House on an educational visit. After I had seen them, they wrote to me asking me to come to the schoolI cannot quite understand why, but perhaps they thought I look like Father Christmas. Interestingly, some of them said they were interested in hearing about the role of an MP because they want to be an MP. Despite what we hearthe hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson) mentioned some wonderful things, but, sadly, I do not even have a link from the luddite websiteif we just talk to people about politics it can be made interesting, and that will get them involved.
	Finally, I wish everyone a happy Christmas. I wish a happy Christmas to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, to the other Deputy Speakers, to Mr. Speaker, to all the staff and to the civil servants who work in the Opposition Whips Office, who have to put up with us and do so admirably. This is perhaps not following protocol, but I wish a happy Christmas to one person who, more than anyone else, allows me to do my job to the best of my ability. I am talking about my wife, and I thank her.

Kerry McCarthy: I want to say a few words about welfare reform. I had hoped to deliver this speech during Monday's debate on the Queen's Speech, but after hours of sitting on the Benches, and as the time available got shorter and shorter, it seemed that it would not be possible to do justice to the subject. I suspect that will be the case again today, so I offer just some preliminary thoughts.
	What concerns me at the moment is the criticism of the Government's proposals coming from two, probably opposite, sides of the political spectrum. Both have quite a distorted take on what we are doing, and neither helps to take the debate forward. The criticisms do not help the people whom the welfare reform proposals are intended to help. A great deal of scaremongering is going on, and some very vulnerable people could be distressed by it.
	The first viewpoint, to which I do not subscribe, says that the Labour Government have, by their support for the welfare state over the past 11 years, fostered a welfare dependency culture in this country. That view states that it has almost become the norm to be unemployed, people can have quite a comfortable life living on benefits and we have bred what I tend to call the Jeremy Kyle generationother people call it the underclasswhereby people have no ambition or aspiration, and there are inter-generational cycles of poverty and worklessness. That has most recently been thrown into the spotlight by the cases of baby P and Shannon Matthews, where the parents or adults involved have been presented as typical examples of the people who have been bred by that sort of culture.
	The other take on our proposals is that the Government have become bullies. People say that we are almost dragging people from their sickbeds, and that we are forcing people who have very serious disabilities and mothers who have just given birth down to the job centre to take on work that might be completely unsuitable with the threat of benefits being taken away if they do not comply. Neither view is helpful, and I shall say a bit more about that in a moment.
	The other thing that surprises me is the number of people who seem to regard what the Government have been saying lately as something of a departure from what we have been doing since we were elected in 1997. It has been said that my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) was entrusted with thinking the unthinkable, but the Government subsequently lost their nerve and did not go down that path. These welfare reform proposals are very much a continuation of what we have been trying to do since 1997helping people to make the transition from welfare into work. It is frustrating to have to reiterate that in this debate, but I wish to reiterate it briefly.
	First, our approach is about the financial side of things: ensuring that people would be better off in work, which involves measures such as tax credits and the minimum wage. Secondly, it is about being able to facilitate working, which means making affordable child care available to people, having flexible working so that people can juggle their other responsibilities and giving the necessary personalised support and encouragement to job seekers through things such as the new deal and Jobcentre Plus.
	I met Jobcentre Plus staff in Bristol last Friday. We talked in detail about what would really help the welfare reform proposals to work, and we found that it comes down to small things, such as the availability of child care. One of the things that those staff told meI have been banging on about poor public transport in Bristol ever since I got electedis that the most important thing for those people, and for lone parents in particular, is how close their jobs are to the schools and their home. People do not want to travel for longer than 20 minutes or half an hour, because when someone is on a tight schedule and they have to drop the kids off at school, go to work for a few hours and then get back to the school gates to pick the kids up or get to the childminders' place, having to use unreliable, expensive buses or having to travel to the other side of the city means that things do not stack up for them.
	As we introduce personalised support, it is important to remember that it is not about a back-of-the-envelope calculation that someone would be financially better off back at work, because work has to fit into their lives and be practicable and doable. Otherwise, people will try working, give up and fall foul of the new sanctions regime, and their children will be the ones to suffer.
	The Government deserve credit for approaching this issue in terms not only of adults who are already in the system, but of children. We hear a lot about apathetic, good-for-nothing youth, but I have met phenomenal young people in my constituency, and they certainly were not born with silver spoons in their mouths. I was at an awards ceremony in Bristol the other day for young achievers. They do community work and make a real difference to people's lives through their voluntary activity. Part of that is down to changes in the school system. One of my sisters has three children and has just returned from living in Spain. It is amazing to talk to her kids, because they cannot believe that the schools in Kent that they now attend have laptops, interactive whiteboards and independent learning. In Spain, the schools are much like they were when I was at school, with learning by rote, copying things off a blackboard and no stimulation or incentive to take an interest in what is being learned. They have only been back a few months, so the feeling may wear off, but at the moment they are delighted to go to school.
	I have many sisters, and I could probably keep the debate going until 6 o'clock talking about various aspects of their lives, but one of them has two sons, one aged 18 and one aged sixquite a gap. She tells me that the difference between when the 18-year-old started school and when the six-year-old started school is phenomenal. She has seen the years of change under this Labour Government, which shows that we have made a real difference and that what we have done is working.
	However, we still have a long way to go. I was struck by what one of the Jobcentre Plus staff said to me on Friday. I presented her with a Remploy regional award for her work with people with disabilitiesshe went on to win the national award, too. Her name is Julia, and she talked to me about people who have been put on the new employment support allowance regime since October. She said:
	Only one of them doesn't want to workand he will by the time I've finished with him.
	That might sound like a threat, but it was not. She knows that people are sometimes very nervous when they come to see her. People think that they cannot possibly work, that their disabilities or illness are too great, that they have not worked for years and that they have no qualifications or skills. She knows that she can work with people like that and, with support, encouragement and the right training courses, she can help to turn their lives around. She is not a box-ticker or a bureaucrat, nor is she interested in forcing people into work just for the sake of saying that she has met her targets, but she is passionately devoted to her work. I met some of her colleagues who are working on the new deal for lone parents, and I was impressed by just how seriously they take their work. They welcome what the Government are doing.
	People talk about an underclass. In one way, I am reluctant to dwell on this issue, because the danger is that it distorts the picture of the majority of those on benefits or who rely on the welfare state as a safety net, the vast majority of whom want to work. It is easy to present a stigmatised and stereotypical image of a lone parent, but the truth is that only 2 to 3 per cent. of lone parents are teenagers, and only 15 per cent. have never been married to or lived with the father of their child.
	We cannot deny that some families have a multitude of problems and lead dysfunctional and chaotic lives. We need to look at them almost as a separate category, because they will not benefit to such an extent from the new proposals. We have to consider, for example, family intervention projectswe have Sure Start, and the Home Office has a family intervention project. The danger is being accused of interfering too much in people's lives, but when such families have children, the problems can be passed on tenfold, so we have a responsibility to intervene.
	The issue is not about judging people by their family structures, which is very wrong. We can talk about whether marriage is the best state in which to bring up children, but we must accept that many people do not grow up in that sort of situation. I do not judge people by whether their parents are married to each other, cohabiting or divorced, or by whether they live with a single parent or stay with their dad at weekends. We should judge people by their relationships, their parenting, their values and their behaviour. I do not think that the financial levers in the welfare reform Bill are enough. We need to have a good hard look at what else we can do to break the cycle with those people.
	I do not think that Karen Matthews is at all typical of the single parents out there. We have to tell people over and over again that she is not typical, because otherwise it will undermine the whole consensus on which the welfare state is built. However, I do not think that we can turn our backs on people like that and just write them off, either.
	I just have time to say merry Christmas to everybody, especially you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown: I am delighted to be able to catch your eye in this debate, Madam Deputy Speaker. Christmas and new year are a good time of year to reflect on what has happened in the last year and to make resolutions for the next year.
	This year has been a very mixed year for my constituents and in the few minutes I have available, I want to concentrate on the loss of services in rural areas. Indeed, the Government's own Commission for Rural Communities estimates that about one in five people live in rural areas, of whom half live in small rural towns. It also states that between 2004 and 2007, life in rural areas compared with that in urban areas has declined. Indeed, its director for analysis, Nicola Lloyd, said:
	A decline in rural services such as post offices and shops continues to concern rural communities and this makes life even more difficult for people who are deprived who are often unable to afford to travel to reach the services and support they need.
	As my speech will show, it is very difficult for those who are vulnerable and who lack basic services and public transport, particularly elderly people, to live in rural areas.
	The demographics in my constituency have been particularly sharp in relation to recent Government policy. The number of young people in the Cotswolds is declining and in that respect the Government's spending on education is particularly worrying. We have a lot of small rural schools and when the local education authority is at the bottom of the expenditure league per pupil, it makes those schools difficult to sustain. Indeed, I think it is very unfair that a child of equivalent family, degree of vulnerability and IQ is substantially disadvantaged in terms of funding from the Government simply because of their postcode. Let me cite the recent figures from the Department for Children, Schools and Families. Spending per pupil for children aged between three and 19 in Hackney in 2005-06, the latest year for which figures are available, was 6,740. In the Cotswolds, the figure was only 3,980. That is almost half. For that to be the case for an equivalent child just because of their postcode is not fair.
	That inequity was perpetuated over the past 10 years, because whereas Hackney received a 39.8 per cent. increase over that time, the Cotswolds received only a 36.8 per cent. increase. The inequality was therefore perpetuated and in the recent  Telegraph league table, published in January, Gloucestershire was cited as 16th out of 149 LEAs. In other words, it was one of the nearest to the bottom. If Gloucestershire were even brought up to the average, that would mean another 200 per pupil. As many of my primary schools have pointed out to me, that 200 would make a huge difference to how they could spend.
	In Gloucestershire we are findingthe figures from the Department of Children, Schools and Families prove thisthat the number of statements issued in schools has declined over the past 10 years. The number of children with special needs has increased, but more worryingly the increase has come at secondary level. In other words, people who need special assistance and who need statementing are not being picked up at an early enough stage. I have seen several cases recently where parents have tried to get their children special needs help or statementing and have had a huge difficulty in doing so. Even parents with very poor levels of income have had to go and get their own private educational and psychological reports in order to be able to prove their case. I do not think that that is acceptable.
	While there are fewer children as a proportion of the population in our constituencies, at the other end of the scale there are more pensioners. One of the scandals in this country is that 1.3 million pensioners do not claim pension credit, and the total loss is 2 billion, or about 13 a week for each pensioner who does not claim. About two thirds of all eligible pensioners claim pension credit and council tax benefit, while almost 90 per cent. of those eligible claim housing benefit. The Department for Work and Pensions needs to look at the matter, as it is unacceptable in our society today that we hide these benefits away. Everyone entitled to them should draw themthat should be what happens.
	I turn now to a point made by several hon. Members this morning. In this financial tsunami, as I call it, pensioners and savers are being disadvantaged by the fact that interest rates have fallen to very low levels. I do not want the Government to cite this as an Opposition expenditure pledge, but we should look at introducing special measures for pensioners. For instance, pensioner bonds could be delivered through the Post Office, thus giving pensioners a better deal and providing more work for post offices.
	In the short time that I have left, I want to say something about post offices. This year, 12 of the 32 offices in my constituency have closeda total almost unprecedented in any other constituencyand all the closures were done purely by Government diktat, according to the criteria that had been laid down.
	One of the two post office on the outskirts of Cirencester turned over 500,000 in the month of January. It was highly profitable, yet both offices were still closed. Now, 19,000 people all have to get into their carsor try to use non-existent public transportto get to the centre of the town. The 21 villages that they live in cover 100 square miles, so the decision to close the two post offices on the outskirts of Cirencester was absolutely crazy.
	On behalf of the Conservative party, my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alan Duncan) welcomed the Government's recent announcement on the Royal Mail. I also welcomed it, but I do not approve of some of the changes that have been made over the past couple of weeks. As I do every year, I visited the sorting office in Cirencester last week to wish my postmen a happy Christmas, but they were a relatively unhappy lot because of the reduction in the amount of overtime and the higher targets that have been set. I have no problem with those changes, which have been made in the interests of efficiency, but it is unacceptable to introduce themand thus make people miserable just before Christmas.
	Yesterday, I heard that my Royal Mail sorting office in Wotton-under-Edge is to close. I shall meet representatives of Royal Mail tomorrow but, again, why did the decision have to be announced within a week of Christmas? It only adds to the misery of the people who will lose their jobs, and I hope that Royal Mail will do its level best to find everyone new employment in adjoining sorting offices.
	I want to make a few brief remarks about railway services in my area. One piece of good news is that the capacity of the Cotswold line is to be doubled, something for which I have campaigned successfully with my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron). However, although a better economic case can be made for it, there will be no doubling of capacity on the line between Swindon and Kemble. As one of the most cost-effective schemes in the south-west, it would have joined the cities of Swindon, Cheltenham and Gloucester at a cost of only 38 million. Connectivity would have been much improved, and the doubling of that line must be achieved to ensure that Gloucestershire's economic growth and prosperity are to be maintained.
	I turn now to the announcement of the Government's U-turn on doctor's dispensary surgeries made by the Minister of State, Department of Health, the hon. Member for Corby (Phil Hope). It is extremely welcome to my constituents but, as my right hon. Friend the Member for West Derbyshire (Mr. McLoughlin) said, people should not have been put through so much anxiety for so long. A further anxiety is that the new super-surgeries will put a number of my small rural doctor's surgeries at risk. Again, I hope that the Government will not keep elderly and vulnerable people in anticipation for too long: if there are to be changes, let us make them quickly, as there is no need to keep people in suspense for months and months.
	I hope that the Government will give rural areas very careful consideration. People think that the Cotswolds are rich and rosy, and in many ways they are. It is a superb place to live, but there are 110 villages and 11 market towns in my constituency and there are pockets of vulnerable, elderly and poor people in every one. They need just as much help from their Government as anybody anywhere else in this country.
	The hon. Member for Selby (Mr. Grogan) is not in his place. He is chairman of the all-party beer group. I am chairman of the all-party wine group. I hope that everyone will visit their local pub. I wholly endorse that wish. When they go there, I hope that they will make the right choice and have a glass of good red burgundy instead of a glass of beer, but I am sure that the hon. Gentleman and every hon. Member will join me in wishing that everyone drinks responsibly this Christmas.
	May I at this point, Madam Deputy Speaker, wish you, Mr. Speaker, the staff of the House and my own staff, who work hard day in, day out to support me, a very merry, happy Christmas and a successful new year?

David Amess: Before the House adjourns for the Christmas recess, I wish to raise many issues. I do not expect the Minister to reply to any of them this afternoon, given the time, but if the appropriate Department could respond by Easter, that would be appreciated.
	The debate takes place against the grimmest background that I have ever known. The country is in a mess; the world is in a mess. The British economy is in freefall. I am not sure that it has been appreciated just how serious things are. Without getting involved in an argument about the state of the British economy, let us make it clear that there has been no boom, but certainly there has been bust. How on earth a strategy can be pursued of the country borrowing more and more money, in the hope that that will get us out of the present state of affairs, I do not know. It is ridiculous. Roll on the general election, and let the British people decide. As my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition has said, the Prime Minister underestimates the intelligence of the British people.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall) mentioned the war with Iraq. I will always regret that, on 18 March 2003, I was unwise enough to believe what Tony Blair said about weapons of mass destruction reaching this country and other parts within 45 minutes. I will regret that decision until the day I die. The latest combined estimated bill of 3.7 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan means that the two operations will have cost the taxpayer 13.2 billion over six years. That has not put the British economy in great shape. Approximately 8,100 British troops are now serving in Afghanistan and the Government have not ruled out sending more, despite what they said this afternoon. A total of 311 British soldiers have been killed242 in actionand sent home in body bags from Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001. This includes 133 in Afghanistan and 178 in Iraq. I know that the Prime Minister told us earlier today that 41 countries have signed up to our involvement in Afghanistan, but I need more convincing about the real objective there. If anyone can come up with a solution to terrorism when people are prepared to take their own life, I would be interested to hear it.
	We have just had an election in America. After Mr. Bush, I was not too concerned whether Mr. Obama or Mr. McCain took over; I just thought that whoever won would be better. I have to say that Labour has slavishly followed the American lead since 1997, with dire consequences in this country. Mr. Obama was elected on the basis of change. Well, his front-line team all seem to be Washington insidersthey are not new at all. Now that Mrs. Clinton is going to be gracing the stage in foreign affairs, I want our British Government, whatever party is in power, to put British interests first and no longer follow slavishly the American lead.
	Many Members of Parliament will have constituents who have come from Zimbabwe. Their plight is awful. A lady who came to my last surgery told me that she had been raped in Zimbabwe, her husband had been murdered and her children are in South Africa. What can we say to someone in that situation? Another constituent, aged 18, entered the UK in August 2002 and has lived with her mother and sister in Westcliff ever since. Her mother is HIV positive and her father died in 2006. She already has some A and O-levels but she is expected to pay fees of 11,000 as an international student, yet she is not allowed to work and nor are her mother and sister. I hope that the appropriate Department will come up with a solution for them.
	The arrest of my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green) was a disgrace and a stain on the mother of Parliaments. Any free-minded Member of Parliament must not let the matter drop. It is an absolute disgrace. A number of issues concern me about the police in general. I deal with any number of local cases in Essexquite what the police authority does these days I do not know.
	One of my constituents was verbally abused and threatened by two clients at a letting agency. The police did not turn up. The case is with the Independent Police Complaints Commission, where it goes on and on. Another wonderful family in my constituency lives next door to a serving Met police officer. There were all sorts of allegations between the two families, and eventually Essex police arrested my constituent, in front of his family, because he was accused of throwing a stone at a fence. That chap was arrested in front of his family and the local rabbi had to go down to the police station. That case has gone to the IPCC too. It is a wonderful organisation, but cases go on and on and nothing happens. I am dealing with one case that has been with the IPCC for more than four years.
	Constituents ask me, Are we living in a police state?, and I wonder what can be going on when we have had a Labour Government since 1997. When they arrived, they were hostile to the police, but it was funny how the cash for honours issue was dealt with.
	A number of colleagues have mentioned the baby P case. Recently, I was talking to Peter Forrest, who was the opposition leader on Haringey council and had a lead role during the Victoria Climbi inquiry. What he told me about what has gone on in Haringey is disgraceful. Recently, on a Channel 4 programme, the Minister for Children, Young People and Families was asked why Ofsted gave Haringey social services a three-star rating just after baby P died. The Minister said that Haringey had deceived Ofsted over the data. Mr. Forrest tells me that exactly the same point was made during the Victoria Climbi inquiry. When I was a member of the Health Committee, we took evidence from Lord Laming and we were told that there would never be another such disaster. Unfortunately, we all know what has happened.
	I was privileged to pilot the Warm Homes and Energy Conservation Act 2000, which should eliminate fuel poverty among vulnerable people by 2010 and for everyone by 2016. Recently, I was lobbied by Macmillan, which is concerned about the plight of cancer patients who need help with their heating bills because they cannot work or even move around their homes.
	A constituent came to see me who, 28 years ago, had been imprisoned for five years because he was supposed to have witnessed a robberywhy he got five years I do not know. Twenty-eight years on he still cannot get insurance, and I should be grateful if a Department could come back to me with an answer about that issue.
	Trinity family centre, which is a wonderful organisation funded by the lottery, helps many people. It has run out of money so any help that can be given would be greatly appreciated.
	I am delighted to tell the House that Southend council is doing brilliantly; its star ratings in every area of its responsibility are better than ever. We recently discovered a Saxon site and we should very much like some money from the Government to assist us with a museum there, and if the Government could come up with a solution in respect of the roads that, too, would be greatly appreciated. On planning, I am very disappointed about the pressure put on locally to produce new housing and lovely buildings are then razed to the ground.
	Tomorrow, I will be impersonating Father Christmas in Southend, West, but 24 hours before then, I wish everyone a very happy Christmas, good health, peace, prosperity and a much better new year.

Mark Williams: It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Southend, West (Mr. Amess). I shall not go into the finer points of his speech, but we are usually on the same side on human rights in Iranan issue to which we will return in the new year.
	I shall focus my brief comments on employment prospects in my constituency and exemplify some of the points that were made by the hon. Member for Cotswold (Mr. Clifton-Brown) on rurality and some of the challenges that face rural communities. He mentioned the post offices in his constituency. One of my great memories of the past year is the campaign that we fought to save 14 post offices in the Ceredigion constituency. Sadly, we lost that battle. In fact, the Post Office added another one to the list. Thanks to the efforts of my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Mr. Williams), who fought to save one of the post offices in Brecon, we lost another one.
	I hoped that we could value the Post Office's claim that weight would be added to the campaign to keep a post office open if it was the last shop in the village. That was the experience of five post offices in Ceredigion: they were the last retail outlets in some of the most scattered rural communities in Wales. Sadly, despite the Post Office's words and the elaborate consultation, it did not accept our argument. I believe that it did not stick to its word, and among the 15 closures, two shops have now gone, very much to the detriment of the communities concerned.
	At this time of year, we will not be short of invitations to chapels, churches and school nativity plays. There will be community spirit still in those villages, but no one can say that the spirit of community will be enhanced by the boarding up and the permanent shut signs in the windows of those businesses. For those of us who are involved in Post Office consultations, that is a lesson about the value that we can attribute to the words in its criteria documents.
	I was prompted to talk about the balance in Ceredigion between the public sector and the private sector by a newspaper article that was brought to my attention. It was published on 1 December in the  Daily Mail, of all papers, and the headlines were Welcome to Soviet Britain and Figures reveal the Labour heartlands where half the population relies on the state for a job. Ten constituencies were listed and, perhaps to my surprise, Ceredigion featured sixth equal in that list. My constituency is not well known as part of the Labour heartlandnor is that of my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (David Howarth)but it does boast a large number of public sector jobs.
	Some 40 per cent. of our work force are employed in the public sector in some manifestation. That is no surprise to Ceredigion. We have the national library, the funding settlement for which sadly means that the doors are often shut at weekends now, rather than open. We have two universitiesAberystwyth and Lampeter. The county council obviously covers a wide rural areaagain, with a very difficult funding settlement. Of course, we have the national health service, with hospitals in Aberystwyth, Tregaron and Cardigan. However, to balance the picture, we also have the highest proportion of micro-businesses anywhere in Wales. We have an essential balance between the public and private sectors.
	At a time when private sector jobs are being lost, we are also feeling the pinch in the public sector. The announcement of the closure of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs office in Aberystwyth was a body blow, not least because half way through the consultation, we felt that we had been successful in keeping at least some of the jobs in the compliance section, which was to remain open, albeit with a reduced staff. The expected loss of a further 20 high-skilled jobs at a factory that I visited yesterdayProthericsin a very rural part of the county at Ffostrasol was a bitter blow. To some people, the loss of 20 jobs may not seem particularly significant, but in a sparsely populated rural area, the effect will be magnified enormously for the local community. On the same day on which those jobs were lost at Protherics, it was announced that hundreds of jobs were lost at Hoover in Merthyr Tydfil. Our sympathy goes out to the people affected.
	The point that I want to get across to the House is that rural communities face incredible difficulties. When such decisions are made by people sitting in London or Cardiffor indeed, in the current climate, in New York or Pariswith their spreadsheets in front of them, do they really understand the implications of some of them for the broader rural community? Ceredigion and West Wales and the Valleys are a convergence funding areaconvergence funding follows on from the old objective 1 moneyin recognition of the deprived nature of the economy. We are also a Communities First area because of the rural deprivation in many wards across the county.
	In the short time available to me, I want to consider the tax office in Aberystwyth. The decision that was taken was a great shock to us in the county. If there is any glimmer of hopeany door that can be pushed openI hope that the Deputy Leader of the House will pursue it with his colleagues. We are talking about highly skilled jobs that are really needed in the rural economy. I would particularly like to make the Government aware of the disappointment felt by HMRC staff about the advice on possible redeployment offered to them by their personnel department. The impact assessment relating to Crown buildings in Aberystwyth said:
	Opportunities may exist to transfer to other Government Departments and HMRC has a support package of measures, both financial and personal, to facilitate such transfers. Other Government Departments located in the area include
	we are talking about Ceredigion, in Wales
	Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs...Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills...Department for Transport.
	Those Departments do not function in Wales, let alone Ceredigion. Many of my constituents felt insulted by the insensitive way in which they were furnished with a UK-wide document as they heard the news that they were about to lose their jobs.
	Of course, any closures are regrettable, but we have real fears for HMRC about future service deliveryfears that may yet be realised. I encourage hon. Members to look at a map of HMRC offices; they will see that HMRC will be void of any presence in Powys, most of rural Carmarthenshire and Ceredigion. The exception is the sparsely manned advice centres. When I had a meeting with the Financial Secretary to the Treasury and his officials, I was told that a couple of outreach workers will cross Offa's Dyke from England to resolve any problems as they arise. That is completely unacceptable.

Roger Williams: That comes at a time when the Government are saying that small businesses must be supported. Small businesses get a huge amount of advice and support from HMRC offices, and that will be denied to them in future.

Mark Williams: My hon. Friend is of course right. His constituency of Brecon and Radnorshire, like my constituency of Ceredigion, boasts a huge number of small businesses. They need advice and support to get them through these difficult times.
	When I met the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, I was given the distinct impression that one functionthe compliance functionwould be retained locally. I am keen to find out what changed in the last two or three weeks of the consultation, between our being told that the compliance function was safe in Aberystwyth and that it was to be taken away. Perhaps the Deputy Leader of the House could convey that to the Treasury. On the same day, it was announced that the Merthyr Tydfil HMRC office was to be retained. I do not denigrate that at all; the issue is not whether that office should be retainedof course it should. What causes me concern is that there may well have been some kind of trade-off in the dying days of the consultation, as a result of which my constituents will suffer.
	I have one other point to make. It may seem marginal to many, but it is of relevance to my constituency, and it illustrates the feeling that rural constituencies are being left to wither on the vine. It concerns European Community directive 2000/56/EC, which relates to the provision of motorcycle testing centres. Again, if one looks at a map showing motorcycle testing centres post-2009, one finds that there will be no motorcycle testing centres in the whole of Powys and Ceredigion. Anybody in my constituency who wishes to take a motorcycle testwe should remember that they will be learnerswill have to travel to Swansea or Shrewsbury, far outside the recommended 45-minute or 20-mile journey. They will have to undertake a 150-mile round trip. It is incumbent on the Driving Standards Agency to look at the matter again.
	Broadband has been mentioned. On a brighter note, there is a suggestion that there should be a universal service obligation in broadband provision, and that is to be welcomed. It will certainly be welcomed by Dr. Jenkins and Mrs. Ffrancon of Blaenplwyf in Ceredigion, who will rely desperately on broadband to further their academic and business work.
	The electronic identification of sheep is another significant issue affecting the farmers of Ceredigion. We had a debate on the issue in Westminster Hall, and we got some sympathy from the colleague of the Deputy Leader of the House because of the injustice of the scheme. We have received the support of the Conservative party, the Liberal Democrat party and Plaid Cymru, which are against the scheme. Yet it is still pushing on, with potentially huge financial implications for the farming community across the country.
	The story of rural communities is a sorry one; I hope that we can enter 2009 with more optimism. Notwithstanding that, I wish everybodyincluding you, Mr. Deputy Speakera happy Christmas. From Wales we wish everyone Nadolig llawen.

Several hon. Members: rose

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I should like to try to give everybody the opportunity to speak, so it would be helpful if hon. Members took a little less than the allotted 10 minutes whenever possible.

Andrew Pelling: I shall certainly follow your guidance, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Like my colleagues, I should like to wish everyone, particularly the staff who have been so supportive to me in difficult times, a very merry Christmas and a prosperous new year.
	Given that Father Christmasnot necessarily the hon. Member for Southend, West (Mr. Amess)is due shortly, it is tempting to say what I want for Christmas. I want many things for Christmas. I am grateful for having been called to speak, incidentally, given that I have an Adjournment debate on Sri Lanka after this debate.
	I have many aspirations for my constituency. There has been a change to railway timetables on the main line from Brighton through East Croydon to London. The authorities have had the problem of shuffling the pressures on that line. That has been particularly difficult because the Gatwick Express dominates track space while being poorly used, and therefore discriminates significantly against the interests of commuters in south London.
	One of the impacts of providing additional priority for rail users south of East Croydon has been a withdrawal of the important service that runs eventually from East Croydon to Crystal Palace. That is because of the removal of services from Smitham to London Bridge, particularly in the day time. There is an irony in the reductions, given that at the same time we have had the upsetting news that the Greater London authority has decided not to progress the extension of the tram link to Crystal Palace. Those two pieces of news are a double blow for Croydon and Crystal Palace.
	I suggest that one way of finding the cheapest solution for making provision is to reopen what was platform 7 at Norwood Junction station. That would mean that there was a new turn-back facility for trains, which would be able to go to Crystal Palace and Victoria from Norwood Junction. The railway authorities estimated that that would cost just 10 million. The issue exercises many MPs with constituencies to the north of Croydon, Central. I am grateful for the great deal of support that I have had, particularly from Labour Members of Parliament, on that issue. I am also pleased to work with the Conservative council in Croydon, the Labour party in Croydon, Ken Livingstone and the right hon. Member for Croydon, North (Malcolm Wicks) to campaign to keep the issue of the Croydon tram link very much on the agenda.
	I am afraid to say that as a child it was possible for me to dream of the most generous of presents, and I am going to name one or two more that would be appropriate for Croydon before finishing early to allow other Members sufficient time to contribute. If there is to be significant fiscal stimulation through capital spend by the Government, every opportunity should be taken to act not only to improve public sector provision but in an intelligent and stimulating way towards local economies to bring in private sector participation.
	For a long time, the key gateway site next to East Croydon station has been undeveloped. That is partly because there were, unfortunately, some foolish approaches by Croydon council, which backed only one developer on its proposal for an arena site, which I am glad to say the Minister concerned decided, with extremely good judgment, not to support, after several appeals. We are left with a site that many people who travel to Gatwick or the south coast will have seen to be completely empty and undeveloped for the past 35 years.
	One way in which that site could be developed is through public sector involvement. I would like Croydon's very limited Mayday university hospital site in Thornton Heath, which many residents to the south of Croydon are reluctant to use, to be replaced with a development on the East Croydon site. That would also allow for the provision of appropriate public sector-supported housing for nurses. Many people from across south London could reach that site with a great deal of convenience. At the moment, constituents coming from the east of East Croydon have to use two bus routes to attend that hospital. That is not appropriate for people who are ill or old and frail.
	I express a final wish in my remaining 14 seconds. There is a huge bottleneck on the rail system at East Croydon. Ultimately, we need an extra two platforms so that all these capacity issues can be dealt with appropriately.

Stewart Jackson: I am pleased to have the opportunity to raise a very important matter in the Housethe worsening security situation in Israel and the Gaza strip. I shall focus particular attention on the plight of Corporal Gilad Shalit, who has been held hostage by the terrorist Hamas movement for two and a half years.
	Since Israel's unilateral disengagement from Gaza in August 2005, 5,128 rockets and mortar shells have been fired into southern Israel, and since 2001 24 people have been killed and 620 injured. One hundred and fifty rockets have been launched in the past six weeks alone, and 17 just yesterday, which is despite a truce negotiated through the Egyptian Government that came into effect on 19 June this year. Israel's withdrawal from Gaza was a courageous act based on a desire for a long-term negotiated peace and for the self-determination of the Palestinian people through a viable and secure Palestinian state.
	Regrettably, the leaders of Hamas remain wedded to a vile Islamist ideology and the creation of an Islamic state secured by violence and the eradication of the state of Israel. Since the withdrawal, 150 Hamas operatives have completed so-called training courses in Iran, and 600 have received instruction by Iranian operatives in Syria, which is unacceptable to the international community. Hamas continues to smuggle weapons into Gaza through a vast network of tunnels on the Gaza-Egypt border and to broadcast jihadist propaganda on Hamas TV. Specifically, they refuse to comply with the three Quartet principles, making progress in talks with Israel all but impossible.
	I want to revert to the plight of Gilad Shalit. Hon. Members know the cause of the Lebanon war in 2006. Although most people know that the catalyst was Hezbollah's kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers from the Israeli side of the Lebanon-Israel border, it is less well known that Hamas kidnapped an Israeli corporal, Gilad Shalit. At 5.40 am on 25 June 2006, in an attack on the kibbutz Kerem Shalom in Israel, two soldiers were killed, four others were wounded and Corporal Shalit was captured. The terrorists had infiltrated the kibbutz through a tunnel from Rafah. The Hamas leadership authorised and spearheaded the attack, taking full responsibility for the raid and praising the terrorists as heroes of the Palestinian people.
	As we know, Hezbollah subsequently murdered the two soldiers in Lebanon. Their bodies were given back to Israel in return for the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, one of whom, Samir Kuntar, a vicious child murderer, was recently given the order of merit by the Syrian regime. I am delighted that the evident disgust of the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the hon. Member for Harlow (Bill Rammell), comes through in his written answer to me, dated 17 December. I know that Foreign Office Ministers have taken up the matter informally with Syria.
	In more than 900 days of captivity, Gilad Shalit has not been allowed visiting rights or even access to any humanitarian organisations. Despite repeated demands from the International Committee of the Red Cross, Hamas has refused him the most basic human rights. Hamas has flagrantly violated every aspect of international law, including humane treatment of its prisoner, his family's right to know of his well-being and permitting humanitarian access.
	On 16 June 2006, Shalit's captors offered to release him if Israel agreed to free all female Palestinian prisoners and all prisoners under 18. More recently, Hamas, Egypt and Israel have come to a standstill on the terrorist group's demand for the release of 1,400 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Shalit. Last week, Israel released 200 from a list of 450 men that Hamas submitted. To date, Israel has freed 450 prisoners in return for the 22-year-old serviceman.
	On 25 June 2007, the Israeli human rights organisation, B'Tselem, issued a statement that,
	international humanitarian law absolutely prohibits taking and holding a person by force to compel the enemy to meet certain demands, while threatening to kill or harm the person if the demands are not met.
	To assist Corporal Shalit and put pressure on Hamas to grant Red Cross access, parliamentarians throughout Europe are leading campaigns to highlight his case. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), my right hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hampshire (Mr. Arbuthnot), the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) and the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne), who yesterday lobbied the Red Cross to ensure that humanitarian access for Gilad Shalit remains high on its agenda.
	My hon. Friend the Member for North-East Bedfordshire launched the European-wide initiative at an international conference in November in Paris and has led the campaign with the Red Cross. Hamas is keen to convince the Red Cross that it is a force with which to be negotiated. However, in reality, it behaves barbarically and flagrantly flouts the most basic tenets of international law. Burning effigies of Corporal Shalit and barring even the Red Cross is symbolic of the activities of a terrorist organisation, not a movement that genuinely seeks a just settlement for the Palestinian people.
	Indeed, far from trying to make moves towards peace, the Hamas leader in Syria, Kahlid Mashal, has declared that the ceasefire will end on 19 Decemberin a few days. That means that Israeli towns such as Sderot, which lies just outside Gaza, will again be subject to intense daily missile bombardment.
	As we approach Christmas and Chanukah, many people throughout Europe and the middle east are working for the release of Corporal Shalit. By doing that, we hold up a standard for humanitarian and civilised values. The campaigns might help the Red Cross gain the access that this Israeli hostage deserves, and be a small step on the road to achieving a just and peaceful settlement and the goal of an enduring two-state solution in the middle east. I hope that the Deputy Leader of the House encourages his colleagues in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to continue their efforts.
	In the meantime, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I wish you and all the Officers and staff of the House a wonderful and restful Christmas, and a successful and prosperous 2009.

Richard Bacon: I wish to raise my concerns over allegations that institutionalised fraud took place at the former Manchester college of arts and technology, better known as MANCAT. Many unanswered questions remain, and I feel that the matter is relevant for two reasons: first, that further education colleges are calling for increased powers of self-regulation; and secondly, that the new Manchester college created by the merger of MANCAT and City college is run largely by former MANCAT senior management.
	To recap, allegations were made by several members of staff at MANCAT relating to the falsification of paperwork such as student registers and additional learning support forms, which, it was said, enabled the college to obtain extra money from the further education body, the Learning and Skills Council. Following my last speech on this subject, I submitted written questions on 2 June to the LSC chief executive, Mark Haysom. I was keen to know why MANCAT kept a secondary system of registers, not produced or signed by tutors, on which to base funding claims, but I received no explanation.
	One of my main concerns was the wholesale destruction of auditable documents by the college, which thwarted inquiries by the LSC's own investigator into the allegations. The documents included, among much else, original registers compiled by tutors. I asked Mr. Haysom who was responsible, who authorised the destruction, how long it had been going on, exactly what had been destroyed and why MANCAT had informed auditors that it had kept records for the requisite six years when it had not done so. I also asked whether any sanctions had been taken against MANCAT when it was discovered that the records had been destroyed. I received no answers to those questions. All that I was told by Mr. Haysom was:
	Failure to maintain and keep appropriate records was one of the issues taken very seriously by the LSC in subsequent dialogue with the college aimed at tightening and improving the college's audit systems.
	In many spheres of work, destroying auditable documents would merit dismissal from post, but I am not aware of any senior managers at MANCAT having been sacked, nor am I aware of any disciplinary proceedings being taken against them. Indeed, the core of its senior management team, including the principal, Peter Tavernor, and the deputy principal, Barbara Forshaw, now run the new Manchester college, which was formed in August 2008. It is one of the two biggest further education colleges in the country, with an estimated annual turnover of 130 million.
	Shortly after my Adjournment debate speech of 22 May, I received a confidential letter from someone working in Manchester's FE sector, telling me:
	It is well worth pursuing your enquiries and a lot of people in Manchester would be greatly heartened by any public enquiry or investigation.
	The writer also said:
	There is a great deal of nervousness regarding the forthcoming merger.
	Information has come to light about how the new Manchester college is being run, and it gives me cause for concern. One aspect is that several capable former members of MANCAT's administration staff, who left MANCAT years ago and joined City college because they were unhappy about MANCAT's record keeping, have now, following the merger, been made redundant at the new institution and asked to sign confidentiality agreementsbetter known as gagging clausesas a condition of receiving the redundancy payments to which they are entitled. It is also my understanding that some of these staff had witnessed malpractice at MANCAT, namely the manipulation of student numbers. Students who had left part-way though a course remained on the database, and the college had continued to claim funding for them throughout the academic year. The Public Accounts Committee has long deplored the use of public money and gagging clauses to prevent people from revealing abuses in the workplace. That approach was routinely used by management at MANCAT to silence potential whistleblowers, which I raised in the Adjournment debate on 22 May. It would appear that this pattern is continuing at the new college.
	Moreover, it is my understanding that the acutely sensitive posts of head of student records and head of management information systems at Manchester college are now being run by a husband and wife team with a close personal connection to the principal of the college, Peter Tavernor. It is the job of one or other of those employees to validate and audit data on which funding claims are based. I am not stating there has been impropriety, but surely that arrangement cannot be ideal, bearing in mind that there are so many unanswered questions surrounding Mr Tavernor's former college.
	I believe that the public have long been denied the rigorous investigation at MANCAT that they deserve. Mr. Haysom has made it clear that the Learning and Skills Council has no appetite for a further investigation, because the crucial records that constituted potential evidence have been destroyed, and because the events occurred several years ago. All that remains highly relevant, however, not only because the new Manchester college is largely being run by senior MANCAT personnel, but because the FE sector as a whole is calling for further self-regulation.
	According to the Association of Colleges website, a system is envisaged that will be
	characterised by a reduction in the regulatory demands placed on providers and single ownership of the regulatory framework facilitated by the single voice.
	In so far as that tortuous sentence makes sense at all, I think that it means that it believes that FE colleges should be trusted to run their own affairs without too much scrutiny or interference from outside. It goes on:
	We envisage a self-regulation system in which providers
	that is to say, colleges
	become respected and trusted partners of Government by recognising their statutory responsibilities and their accountability for the effective delivery of national policy and the efficient use of public funds.
	I particularly note the word trusted, as trust was conspicuously absent in MANCAT's relationship with its former external auditors, PricewaterhouseCoopers, which was called in to investigate after a former lecturer raised concerns about the manipulation of student registers. Six months after that exercise, PricewaterhouseCoopers resigned, and the PWC partner, Lee Childs wrote to Peter Tavernor, stating:
	Frankly, I do not believe it possible to audit effectively without trust on both sides.
	I am aware that MANCAT has always refuted allegations of fraud and malpractice even though detailed allegations of manipulated paperwork surfaced independently from different individuals in unconnected departments. After my last Adjournment debate speech, I received indignant letters from two MANCAT governors claiming that the allegations had always been unsubstantiated. They informed me that since those events the college has had an Ofsted inspection and an LSC review of its financial governance systems with exemplary results and that its maintenance of student records had been described by PricewaterhouseCoopers as a model of good practice.
	I have no doubt that much good work has been done at MANCAT, but I am also mindful that in 2002 it had had its previous Ofsted inspection just as allegations began to surface. A grade 1, which is outstanding, was awarded to the English for speakers of other languages department, but it subsequently emerged in signed statements from several former staff that that department was allegedly riddled with the sort manipulation that I have described.
	Several tutors in ESOL and in the department of computer imaging were pressed to alter the registers on which funding was based. One tutor in computer imaging was reported as saying:
	If students were absent, we had to mark them with a zero, which meant they did not attend; did not contact college...The student would be withdrawn after three zeros, but I was told not to mark students who ceased to attend with a zero. It was explained to me that if a student were to be withdrawn before a certain benchmark date, the college would lose funding...I was told by a divisional leader to mark a student who had ceased to attend as being off with 'authorised absence' or AA in the register. I was very uneasy about this; I put A, or absent and from then on photocopied my registers each week.
	Another former tutor in the ESOL department told of registers being altered after they had been handed into the departmental head, Marina Parha:
	Names unfamiliar to the class teacher had appeared and in some cases existing students had been marked present when they had, in fact, been absent...On showing my own registers to Marina Parha in the first term of the academic year 2001-02, I was asked by her what all the zeros were for. When I explained they indicated student absences, she replied: 'I don't like all those zeroswe'll have to do something about that'. In a subsequent meeting, she told me to change some of the zeros to ticks for a few weeks. I did not argue and neither did I alter my registers.
	I refer to what one former ESOL lecturer said in a statement prepared for a colleague who intended to take MANCAT to an employment tribunal for unfair dismissal. The lecturer said that
	in a meeting just before the Ofsted inspection at the end of April 2002... Marina Parhawho was in charge of ESOL at Mancatannounced to the teachers that the department had achieved a student retention rate of 100 per cent.
	The statement continues:
	Those present were stunned by what she saidwe were, after all, the teachers of the classes and we knew that it was common for students to leave, sometimes without any warning, in the middle of their courses. It was common knowledge in the department that she had amended our registers to create a false impression of student retention.
	The former lecturer went on to say that he had been asked by a team leader to
	mark my absent students as present on my class register, in order (so she said) to avoid such absences casting a negative light on my performance as a teacher. I refused to do this.
	He described a conversation he had had with a colleague who had been sacked:
	I found out that he had been subjected to pressure into signing misrepresentative documents and had refused to do so. Marina Parha seemed to revel in her ability to deceive. She actually boasted to the teachers in a meeting how she was going to give an incorrect picture to the Ofsted inspector during the inspection.
	He then described how Ms Parha said she would do this by carefully selecting files that showed the level of students' work in a good light.
	The colleague wrote in a statement that Ms Parha was
	contemptuous about the inspection process at Wednesday evening staff meeting. She was pleased we had only one inspector... who knew absolutely nothing about ESOL.
	He then described how Ms Parha told staff she wanted as many groups of students as possible to go out on trips during the week of the inspection, and
	focus his attention on certain classes.
	He went on:
	I believe it is legitimate to speculate that the inspector's exposure to the reality of the department was carefully controlled and that he was not given a full picture of the classes, teaching, administration or staff morale within it.
	Ms Parha has continued to thrive since her department gained its grade 1: she is now head of department for language support at the Manchester college, but I would suggest that the Ofsted exercise of 2002 gives food for thought about how far such inspections can be relied upon to give a true picture. I also suggest that all those events should make the Secretary of State cautious about granting further education the increased self-regulation that it so strongly desires.
	May I wish everyone a happy Christmas.

John Mason: I do not think I can speak quite as fast as the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr. Bacon). Many subjects have been mentioned in the debate so far. It is an appropriate time of year to talk about the middle east, but I would prefer us to be peacemakers in the middle east, rather than taking one side or the other.
	Christmas is a time of good will and an opportunity to thank people, so I take the opportunity of this speech to thank both the Labour party and the Liberal Democrats for introducing the highly successful proportional representation system in Scotland. I am doubly appreciative because we have it both in the Parliament and in the councils, especially in Glasgow. I have to accept that I have been elected under the first-past-the-post system on four occasions out of five, so I have benefited from that system, but I remain convinced that the PR system is much better.
	We have to thank Tony Blair and Donald Dewar for introducing PR for the list system for the Scottish Parliament in 1999, which has led to fairer government and greater consensus. The first two terms, of course, were coalition government. PR also opened up the opportunity for minority government. Some had reservations about that in 1999 and 2003 and no one dared try it, but now it has been tried and it works. The First Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond), is to be congratulated on the tremendous success he has made of that.
	The second form of proportional representation for which I am grateful is PR by single transferable vote, from which the 32 Scottish local authorities benefit. That was introduced in 2007, thanks largely to the Lib Dems, who insisted on it in 2003. In Glasgow's case that has been a huge improvement. First past the post had latterly been a total failure in Glasgow. In 2003 Labour took 71 of the 79 seats, which is 90 per cent. of the seats on only 47 per cent. of the vote. By contrast, in 2007 that was reduced to 58 per cent. of the seats, even though Labour was still in control. But the system means that representation is much closer to the actual vote and the will of the people.
	The advantage of STV is that as well as being more proportional, it maintains the strong councillor-ward link, or potentially the strong MP-constituency link. There are clearly different forms of proportional representationthe list in the Scottish Parliament, and STV in Glasgow city council and elsewhere. STV has the bonus that the public choose both the party and the individual.
	It would be good at this time to acknowledge, as I hope all Members of the House would do, the hard work that many councillors do throughout the country. As the Member who has most recently been a councillor, I see the huge amount of work that councillors put in. They often get little support and are not well paid for that work.
	Another advantage of proportional representation is that the public prefer us to consider issues on a case-by-case basis. They get fed up with issues being pushed through by one party no matter what. PR encourages more of a shared agenda between parties. It means that we are more likely to get a result that is in tune with public opinion. Minority government takes that even further by making it essential that each individual case is looked at. It depends on how mature the Opposition tend to be. In Scotland we have seen co-operationwith the Conservative party, I must admit, which is perhaps not our expectationon getting more police on the street. That has been a practical success of PR and STV. We have smaller class sizes

Andrew Pelling: I endorse the hon. Gentleman's comments and share experience with regard to the London Assembly, which is also elected by proportional representation. That has meant that, rather quixotically but also quite effectively, there has been a dialogue between a broad spectrum of views, including Greens, UKIP, Liberals and Conservatives. Getting politicians to co-operate publicly in that way must be a great endorsement from British politics.

John Mason: Indeed. One of the disappointments that I have had in coming here is that there are no Green politicians in the House. The public are extremely concerned about the environment, yet one party is totally excluded from the House.
	Of course, the Government can sometimes be defeated in such circumstances. For example, the proposal for trams in Edinburgh was passed, with the result that fewer schools are now being built in Scotland. However, I urge Members to consider PRSTV at some stage. It might prove to be a big success both here and in another place.
	Finally, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I thank you and almost all Members here for giving me, as a new Member, such a warm welcome. I wish you a very merry Christmas and a happy new year.

Paul Holmes: I shall wish everyone a happy Christmas and new year now, because I shall end my speech by talking about the Iraq war, and that may not be the best context in which to wish people a happy Christmas.
	A Member who spoke earlier issued an annual invitation to Members to visit her wonderful constituency in Devon. That is a county that I know well and love, but may I invite Members to take a Christmas and new year break in my constituency? If they want outdoor activity, Chesterfield is a great base. Two or three miles down the road is the fantastic Derbyshire Peak district. People can walk on the moors, uplands and lowlands, where the scenery is absolutely beautiful. They can visit Chatsworth house, or, a couple of miles in the other direction, Bolsover castle, Hardwick hall and the National Trust's Clumber park. Those are wonderful attractions, but there is also a great deal to be seen in Chesterfield itself. People can enjoy themselves and work off the Christmas pudding and the mince pies.
	When I first lived in Chesterfield in 1979, the Chesterfield canal was a stagnant, overgrown ditch, but volunteers have renovated it, and it is now a linear green lung. It is possible to follow it from the centre of Chesterfield into the countryside. It is widely used by birdwatchers, fishers, walkers, cyclists and canal enthusiasts. The Barrow Hill engine shed is not technically in my constituency, being just over the border in the constituency of North-East Derbyshire, but it is effectively part of Chesterfield. It is one of the few working roundhouses that survive from the great steam train age, and is a very popular tourist attraction.
	In 1688, the Revolution House at Old Whittington was a small pub at the edge of a little hamlet up on the moors. That is why the Duke of Devonshire and others from across Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire who were plotting a treasonable actthe overthrow of the King in the glorious revolution of 1688met there to plot in secret, away from prying eyes.
	Chesterfield has a wonderful old town centre with a large open-air market, which is the focal point of the town and brings in a large number of shoppers, tourists and other visitors. At one end is the parish church, the Crooked Spire. Many Members will have seen it when travelling from one end of England to the other on the midland main line. It has a crooked corkscrew spire which both twists and leans to one side. There are seven such spires in Europe, but Chesterfield's is the one that twists and leans the most. It is a great tourist attraction: people come from throughout Europe, and even from America, specifically to see the church and the spire.
	One of the advantages of visiting Chesterfield at Christmas is the opportunity to see the Christmas lights. That brings me to a key point. Year after year, the borough council invests more money in expanding and improving the lights. Apart from putting out the Christmas message, brightening up the midwinter scene and helping people to enjoy themselves, they attract visitors to Chesterfield's wonderful town centre with its large open-air market. That brings in people who spend money and create jobs in the shops and on the market stalls.
	Unfortunately, the Labour councillorsthere are a few left in Chesterfielddo not understand. They consider investing money in Christmas lights to be a strange thing to do, although it creates jobs and brings in visitors. When the Liberal Democrats took over the council in 2003, they built a new coach station which the previous council had refused point-blank even to consider. That bus station was absolutely dire. At one stage, it featured in the national press as the worst in the United Kingdom. It was such an eyesore. The Liberal Democrats built a new station, and now there are coaches. When the Christmas lights were switched on one Sunday a few weeks ago, coaches came from places as far away and as varied as Walsall and Lowestoft, each of them bringing 40 or 45 visitors to spend the day, see the lights turned on, and spend money at the market and in the pubs and restaurants in the town centre. It is all part of job creation and making the town vibrant.
	The number of lettings at the market has increased this year, while most open-air markets around the country are suffering badly. As a member of the all-party parliamentary group on markets, I hear from people all over the country that open-air markets are suffering as a result of competition from shops, stores such as Primark, out-of-town shopping centres and massive car boot sales. For the first time in some years, however, the number of stall lettings at Chesterfield market has increased. The shops in Chesterfield have a 4 per cent. vacancy rate, compared to the English average of 10 per cent. They are doing very well. A recent university survey marked out Chesterfield as one of the fastest growing and improving economies in England.
	All of this brings me on to the problems local councils face when trying to invigorate and renovate their economies. They know what is most needed and wanted locally, and they are best placed to take that action, but they are often handicapped by the Government and the funding streams that the Government control. At yesterday's Prime Minister's Question Time there was a question about a council that had turned down an offer of free swimming for under-16s and pensioners. How could it be so callous as to turn down this free offer from the Government? Many councils have done thatalthough not Chesterfieldbecause the Government have, of course, not funded it. They have given out this wonderful initiative, but they have not provided all the money. Chesterfield is providing that free swimming, but it is costing us 50,000 of council tax payers' money to cover the shortfall in Government funding. That is 1.2 per cent. on council tax for Chesterfield, which is a small council. Also, this year and next year there will be the 3 per cent. Gershon efficiency savings, and next year2009-10there will be a 0.6 per cent. grant settlement from the Government, who provide 75 per cent. of council money; that is well below the inflation rate. Therefore, there will be more cuts. The year after that, the settlement will be 0.2 per cent. so there will be more cuts again.
	The council has to meet those settlements, but Chesterfield does so very well, as it is a well-run council. It was, in fact, on course to start expanding some services next year with the money it had set aside, but then we got the concessionary bus fares fiasco. At the start of this year, councils across the country said, The Government are not providing enough money for this wonderful new national scheme. In Chesterfield, the guesstimate was that it would be down by about 300,000. The figures have now come in from Derbyshire county council, which is administering the scheme, and Chesterfield is expected to put in about 1.8 million to bail out the Government's scheme. As I have said, Chesterfield is a small council, and that sum amounts to 11 per cent. of its average revenue budget. It cannot afford that; it is impossible. That will devastate the council's finances. The options are to either put 36 per cent. on council tax or slash services by 11 per cent. This is happening all over the country, but according to Local Government Association figures, Chesterfield is the worst hit council in the country; Exeter and Cambridge, with a proportion of 8 per cent. of annual revenue, are the next two worst hit. The Government must backtrack on this and provide the proper funding for their scheme, as they introduced it.
	I became increasingly angry while listening to the contributions on the statement on Iraq earlier this afternoon, because Members seemed to be reinventing history. Both Labour and Conservative Members said we could forget the illegal invasion, the 300,000 civilian deaths, the breeding ground for terrorism that has been created when terrorists were not operating in Iraq before, the wrecked economy over the past five years in Iraq and the destabilisation of the Arab world, because we had had regime change, which made it okay. Iraq was never about regime change, however; that was explicitly stated by the then Prime Minister. For example, on the radio on 18 November 2002, the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, said:
	I have got no doubt that the purpose of our challenge...is disarmament of weapons of mass destruction. It is not regime change.
	On 30 November, he made the same basic point:
	It is solely because of the threat
	from weapons of mass destruction that Saddam Hussein poses,
	and for this reason alone,
	not regime change.
	On 25 February 2003, the then Prime Minister said in this Chamber:
	I detest his regime...but even now, he could save it by complying[ Official Report, 25 February 2003; Vol. 400, c. 124]
	with the demand for disarmament of weapons of mass destruction, which did not exist, as we all know, and as some of us could see was the case even before the illegal invasion.
	The then Prime Minister said on three occasions that it was not about regime change. Regime change is illegal under international law. If we have really adopted this policy of regime change, when are we invading Zimbabwe or Burma, or China to get it out of Tibet? This is nonsense; the Government know it is not a policy. It was just a fig leaf to disguise the fact that we were taken into an illegal war under totally false pretences and pretexts. As a citizen, I joined the 1 million other citizens, along with my youngest daughter, who was 10, to walk past the Palace of Westminster in protest at the illegal invasion that everyone could see was coming. As an MP, I took part in our process and voted against that war.
	One or two Conservative MPs have said, both following the statement and during this debate, that we should not be criticising what happened and that we should forget all that. I remember the wall of sound that came across from the Government Benches attacking us because we were opposed to the war, but I remember even more the comments that came from some Members on the Conservative Benches to my right; they were shouting about cowardice, offering white feathers, and displaying jingoism and bombast of the worst kind. As a citizen who took part in that million-person march and who voted against the war in this Chamber, I think it is unacceptable that in this afternoon's statement about pulling out British troops we did not get a statement about an open inquiry into the disastrous illegal decision to invade Iraq.

Eric Joyce: I thank the hon. Member for Glasgow, East (John Mason) for making a short speech and giving me the chance to contribute for a few minutes.
	I simply wish to say a few words about UN resolution 1843 on the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to which the UK Government signed up one month ago. It resolves to increase the size of the United Nations mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 17,000 to 20,000. MONUC is run by a UK citizen, Alan Doss. It was argued very strongly by the UN that there was a requirement to increase the number of troopsalthough 17,000 personnel are in the DRC, it is a very large countryin view of the latest phase of a civil war that is going on between two groups, the CNDP, which some people think is helped by some Rwandan citizens, and the FDLR. The FARDC, the Congolese Government troops, who are deeply ineffectual, are also involved.
	The UN has deployed to do what it can in that situation, and the UN Security Council has agreed that extra troops are required. The assessment was that it would take two months to deploy the UN's troops in the DRC, once it had found who was actually going to send 3,000 troops there. I understand that the realistic assessment now is that it will take six months to deploy them. Everyone agrees that this is an enormously urgent situation, because raping, looting and pillaging are occurring. Although a ceasefire is technically in place between the FARDC and the CNDP, the two protagonist groupsthe FARDC is made up of the Government troops, but there are issues to address associated with the behaviour of all the troops involveda great deal of fighting is still going on between groups such as the Mai-Mai and the CNDP. The civilians get caught in the crossfire and they also get targeted deliberately. Two little girls, one aged five and the other seven, were shot dead a few days ago inside a UN camp, and a series of rapes took place just outside itrapes are used in the DRC as a weapon of war.
	May I quote two sentences from the Security Council meeting on Monday? The record states that the UK contribution
	stressed the importance of the earliest possible deployment of the 3,000 additional personnel, as mandated by resolution 1843...however, the target of two months was a bit 'too leisurely'.
	We were saying that the deployment was taking too long. We stressed the fact that we were able to deploy much more quickly in the relatively recent case of the Lebanon. We are also told:
	The United Kingdom stood ready to find...troop-contributing countries, to help deployments, and it stood ready to contribute both equipment and personnel, notably on the command and intelligence sides.
	The Foreign Secretary went straight out to the DRC with the French Foreign Secretary, and Lord Malloch-Brown has worked tirelessly to do something about this situation, but the fact is that, at the moment, resolution 1843 is just a piece of paper, and nothing is happening in respect of it. I do not blame any particular country, although some countries are more reluctant to contribute than others, and I certainly do not blame the UK Government, but the reality is that the totality of the effort on resolution 1843 is that nothing is happening.
	Mindful of that, Ban Ki-moon, the Secretary-General, has asked for an EU force to deploy to fill the gap. It is very difficult for the UK to deploy troops, because we have heavy commitments in Afghanistan, but it is equally difficult to see, at the moment, where any other countries are going to contribute any other troops. If the UK were to contribute a proportion, there would be a risk that it would end up taking on the whole task. That is the fundamental sticking point from the UK's point of view. Some countries that would like to do something cannot because they cannot secure the agreement of all the other European countries. There are historical difficulties in respect of the involvement in the region of countries such as France and Belgium, but I believe that Belgium in particular would be prepared to deploy troops to plug that gap.
	Those who know the situation there know that Goma needs to be properly stabilised. At the moment, the CNDP and General Nkunda, who commands it, could take Goma if they wished. That would be a grievous blow to the DRC and it would threaten its integrity as a country, and it would be a grievous blow to the UN. We desperately need to respect UN resolution 1843 and, in the meantime, an EU force will probably need to be involved. At the moment, it appears that although we are saying that this is terribly urgent, because all over the place women are being raped and children are being murdered, the international community is doing literally nothing at all about resolution 1843. We really must get a grip of the situation.

Shailesh Vara: May I join in with the plaudits for the Deputy Leader of the House, and wish him well on his first outing at an Adjournment debate? Given the quality of the praise given to him, I hope that he does not feel too much pressure. In any event, I am sure that he will rise to the occasion as he always does.
	We started with a knowledgeable and thoughtful contribution from the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Meg Munn). It clearly reflected her experience before she entered the Commons, when she worked in the social services arena. She referred to the tragedy of baby P, and we all agree that the challenge is to try to minimise risk to children. Sadly, we may have to contend with the fact that we may never be able to prevent such tragedies completely.
	The hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Burstow) followed, and I disagreed with some of his comments. He said that Members were off for a long holiday, but most of us take the view that being in Parliament is part of our duties and we will be doing a lot of work in our constituencies. Although I appreciate that his party will put out a holier than thou press release saying that he is against this long break, I wish him a happy holiday in his constituency, while the rest of us are working in ours.
	The hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mr. Hall) referred to a disagreement that he had with the late Gwyneth Dunwoody. I remember it well, as I was sitting here wondering how to address the argument that was going on. I give him all credit for having the courage to concede that he was wrong. I am sure that Gwyneth would have been very proud of him.
	My right hon. Friend the Member for West Derbyshire (Mr. McLoughlin) delivered a typically powerful speech and his constituents can rest assured that they have a strong voice in this Chamber. He rightly criticised the disgraceful delay in making a final announcement on Post Office card accounts. There are still some questions that need to be answered about the millions of pounds that were squandered on the whole process, and indeed the millions of pounds that were paid to all those who put in bids but got nowhere with them.
	My right hon. Friend also highlighted the importance of the spoken word and integrity, when he recalled the Prime Minister's promise, made at the Dispatch Box, of a statement on Equitable Life before Christmas. The Prime Minister has failed to provide an explanation of why that will not happen, and nor has he apologised for promising something that has not been delivered. My right hon. Friend asked a straightforward questionwhy the delayand I hope that the Deputy Leader of the House will answer it.
	The hon. Member for Selby (Mr. Grogan) made an impassioned plea that when President-elect Obama visits the United Kingdom, he visits a pub. The hon. Gentleman is chairman of the all-party beer group, and I hope that he will bear in mind the rest of its members and that we will all be invited along to drinks with President Obama, as he will then be. May I just point out that my constituency has several excellent pubs which would be happy to host the President?
	My hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Turner) raised several points, including some serious concerns about the local bailiff service. I was concerned to hear about the job application of one of his constituents. My hon. Friend raised some important questions about funding and the Ministry of Justice, and I hope that answers will be forthcoming.
	The right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) described himself as a usual suspect and, as usual, he raised several issues. In particular, he made a plea for greater awareness for diabetes, and he certainly put that on the record today. I hope that his efforts in raising that awareness will have received a big boost from his contribution today.
	My right hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Mr. Mackay) raised a number of serious points about the arrest of my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green). My right hon. Friend rightly questioned the role of some senior Ministers, particularly the Home Secretary, and expressed considerable regret at the fact that the Speaker had proposed a Speaker's Committee that was subsequently hijacked by the Government, who put forward their own version of the Speaker's Committee. The two certainly did not match. A number of questions remain unanswered. May I point out to the Deputy Leader of the House that if he and his Government feel that the issue will simply stay in the long grass, we hope that it will not and we will persist until we get those answers?
	The hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Shona McIsaac) brought the reality of war to our debate when she mentioned the death of Lance Corporal Mathew Ford. She asked if his mother would be able to meet some of the relevant Ministers. I hope that the Deputy Leader of the House will have taken that on board and will facilitate some of those meetings. Having visited Afghanistan very recently, I also take this opportunity to pay tribute to our brave men and women who, while the rest of us are enjoying festivities over this Christmas period, will be doing anything but.
	I wish my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Angela Browning) well in trying to overcome the traffic difficulties associated with Cullompton in her constituency. I hope that the Government will have heard her words about the difficulty that many people are having with the income that they rely on from interest on their savings. The Government will have heard her message about the dependency that many elderly people have on interest derived from savings, which, as we know, is increasingly declining.
	Deep discontent with his local railway line was all too clear when we heard the hon. Member for Norwich, North (Dr. Gibson). However, he went on to suggest the nationalisation of the railway industry. As far as I am aware, that was not in the Queen's Speech, but perhaps the Deputy Leader of the House would like to confirm that we have not just had a Labour Back Bencher giving us a Christmas leak of some sort.
	It is not often that I find myself in agreement with a Lib Dem Member, but the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson) will have had considerable sympathy from many Members when she spoke about the misery of some of her constituents in dealing with the tax credit system.
	I am sure that the House will have been appalled to hear about the treatment in Southern Cross residential care homes, as mentioned by the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell). I wish the hon. Gentleman and my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall) well in trying to get urgent redress for those elderly people who are suffering. I also hope that the strong message that my hon. Friend tried to convey to the chief executive of Hillingdon hospital will have been heard. On behalf of us all, I wish my hon. Friend's mother well, as I know that she has recently been unwell.
	The hon. Member for Bristol, East (Kerry McCarthy) threatened to talk at length about her sisters and their lives but thought better of it. She spoke, however, in more serious terms when she referred to the underclass in our society, which is something that has been in the media a lot recently. I hope that she will agree with the hard work that has been put in by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr. Duncan Smith) and the Centre for Social Justice, with which he has been working so diligently.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Cotswold (Mr. Clifton-Brown) and the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mark Williams) spoke, rightly, of the numerous problems facing those who live in rural areas. That is an ongoing issue and those of us who have rural constituencies will have much sympathy with what they had to say.
	As always, my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West (Mr. Amess) raised a number of issues. He was absolutely right to point out the dire straits that our economy is in as well as the tragedy of Zimbabwe.
	The hon. Member for Croydon, Central (Mr. Pelling) spoke of the need for another platform at East Croydon railway station. I think that he will agree that that is a cause that will not be won easily, but I wish him well in his campaign.
	My neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Mr. Jackson), spoke of the appalling circumstances of the kidnap of Corporal Gilad Shalit by Hamas. He has been in captivity now for some 900 days, and I have much sympathy with all that my hon. Friend said. Indeed, when I was successful in securing a debate in Westminster Hall, I too raised the tragedy of Corporal Shalit's kidnap. I wish the campaign well, as it is certainly very inhumane for people like him, and the many others in captivity, to be treated in that way.
	My hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr. Bacon) spoke again about the difficulties that have arisen with one of his local colleges. I recall that it was not so long ago that he spoke in similar vein in an Adjournment debate, and I am sorry that not much progress has been made. All I can do is wish him success in his next Adjournment debate, and I hope that the fact that he has mentioned the matter today will prompt those in authority to take proper notice.
	The hon. Member for Glasgow, East (John Mason) is a relatively new Member of the House, and I welcome him as such, but I disagree with his support for proportional representation. Under that system, political parties are elected on the manifestos that they set out, but afterwards they hide behind closed doors. They then produce new deals on which the public have had no say, but that is the form of Government that the hon. Gentleman seems to prefer. In addition, PR tends to give minority parties greater credibility and an amount of power disproportionate to what they deserve. That is probably one reason why such parties are always banging on about it.
	There was a festive flavour to the contribution from the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Paul Holmes), who told us about excellent Christmas lights in his constituency. He said that they bring people in who then support the local economy by visiting pubs, restaurants and the like. He is certainly proving to be a good advocate for his local tourist industry.
	The hon. Member for Falkirk (Mr. Joyce) raised serious issues concerning United Nations resolution 1843, and he spoke of the need for nations to work together. As we all know, conflict overseas is bad enough without the additional difficulty of trying to get many countries to work together to deal with it. Again, his contribution served to remind us of all the tragedies taking place around the world at this Christmas period.
	Finally, Mr. Deputy Speaker, may I take this opportunity to wish you and all hon. and right hon. Members a very happy Christmas? I should like to extend the same good wishes to all Clerks and House staff, as well as to all the cleaners, caterers and security personnel who make our lives so easy and thereby enable us to serve our constituents. I wish everyone in the House a happy Christmas and a prosperous and successful new year.

Chris Bryant: My predecessor warned me that these debates were slightly odd events, to put it mildly. I have taken part in many European affairs debates, and I have likened them to an episode of Dad's Army, with people constantly saying, They don't like it up 'em, you know! However, today's debate reminded me rather more of an episode of 'Allo 'Allo!, as I shall explain.
	For instance, we certainly have Colonel von Strohmthe seemingly very bluff but actually extremely bright man who organises everythingand that would definitely be the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall). We also have Herr Flick, who is constantly scheming and a great enforcer of discipline, and I think that that is my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley (Mr. Spellar). We certainly have Lieutenant Gruber, in the person of the extremely dapper, precise and keen-to-please right hon. Member for Bracknell (Mr. Mackay). Unfortunately, he is not in his place at the moment, for which absence he has offered his apologies. Above all, we have General von Klinkerhoffen, the heavyweight with the warm heart who is much nicer than his politicsdefinitely the right hon. Member for West Derbyshire (Mr. McLoughlin).
	Everyone has been wonderfully eloquent today so the debate lacked Officer Crabtree, the man who gets all his words wrong, but that role would probably fall to the leader of the Liberal Democrats, who sadly has not been able to take part in the debate. We have not had a Helga or a von Smallhausen, and we certainly have not had a Louise of the resistance, because she would say something only once. However, we have had Madam Edith, who invites everyone into her caf and then warbles away to them eloquently. That is the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Angela Browning).  [ Interruption. ] I did not hear what the hon. Lady just shouted at me.

Angela Browning: I am very grateful that I was not cast as Grandma.

Chris Bryant: Well, I think she used to get rather worried about the knobs at the end of her bed.
	We started off with my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Meg Munn), a close friend of mine ever since we were elected in 2001. She made an important speech about child protectionan issue that has exercised the whole of the country in the past few weeks and months, with specific cases that we all know about. She spoke from her personal experience very effectively.
	We then moved on to the speech of the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Burstow). It was a bit of a PR puff for his council, which of course he used to sit on. Before that, I think he used to work for Kall Kwik, which doubtless has been useful in the production of constant Focus leaflets. His speech had a little bit of the ring of the Focus leaflet to it, but I would not want to doubt his word as I do every Focus leaflet I have ever seen in my life.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Mr. Hall) asserted that Gwyneth Dunwoody was always right. This was difficult to disagree with when she was physically here, but now that she is not, I have to say that I did not always agree with her. But my hon. Friend made some important points, notably about water charges for charities. I am prepared to make sure that the meeting to which he referred takes place.
	My hon. Friend also referred to the measles outbreak. There are important lessons to learn about the rise in the number of measles outbreaks. Much of the scaremongering of a few years ago about the MMR vaccine has receded. Measles is a serious illness that can cause complications such as meningitis and encephalitis, and on rare occasions it can kill. So it is important that all parents take the opportunity that is offered to them by the health service.
	General von Klinkerhoffen then made his speech: the right hon. Member for West Derbyshire referred at some length to rural issues, but I recognise many of the issues that he said were rural issues from my constituency of Rhondda, where the population is highly concentrated. Many of the same issues arise, such as what is happening with post offices, the local economy and pubs and the provision of broadband.
	The right hon. Gentleman, like many hon. Members, asked why we had not yet had a statement on Equitable Life. I know from my own constituency that the issue exercises a large number of people. As it happens, I took a loss myself. It is important that the Government get this right and do not rush into action. I know that the Prime Minister said he wanted there to be a statement by Christmas, and I believe that he believed it was going to be possible at that time. I do not think hon. Members need to imagine that some nefarious plotting is going on; it is simply that we want to make sure that we get this rightand the right hon. Gentleman can take that face off.
	The right hon. Gentleman also referred to the takeover of Derbyshire building society by the Nationwide and the issues related to the Isle of Man. I have constituents who have lost money in the Isle of Man. There are difficulties here because the arrangements for depositors in banks in the Isle of Man and Guernsey are a matter for the Governments of those islands. We do not have plans to issue a statement, but deposits with Kaupthing Singer and Friedlander of the Isle of Man will be subject to the Isle of Man deposit compensation scheme.
	The right hon. Gentleman also talked about people who did the right thing and saved up throughout their life yet find themselves penalised at the end. This is one of the toughest issues for any Government who want to treat people fairly. How do we make sure that those people who have set a bit aside do not get penalised? I believe that what we have done in the past few years, by making sure that the increased prosperity of this country has been shared out among all pensioners, regardless of whether they are rich or poor, through the winter fuel payment and the pension credit, has gone some way towards that, but there is further that we could go.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Selby (Mr. Grogan) revealed that he thinks 58 hours spent with his family over Christmas is far too long, and that the trains should be got going a little earlier so that he can escape them. I think that was the gist of his speech. He made an important point about the role of ITV. When it comes to Ofcom's final report in the new year, many hon. Members will want an opportunity to raise related issues. To have a single, monopoly broadcaster as the voice of our country, especially in news broadcasting and current affairs, would be highly detrimental to the democratic and social welfare of the country. My hon. Friend also referred to racing. As he knows, it is for the racing fraternity to decide how to allocate rights and for the broadcasters to decide what they show over Christmas.
	The hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Turner) raised a series of issues, including one about planning. I have learned one thing in life, which is to try never to get involved in a planning or a parking issue, but the hon. Gentleman raised two issues on which I hope I shall be able to help him. The first was about the bailiff service for the Isle of Wighthe may have said baillie, but I think the word is bailiff. He asked questions about funding from the Ministry of Defence, and I shall follow them up and make sure he gets a proper answer as soon as possible.
	The hon. Gentleman also spoke about the fallen stock collection service on the Isle of Wight and made various suggestions about how it might be addressed. I shall take up those issues with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on his behalf.
	My right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) made an important point about preventive medicine and referred to his type 2 diabetes and to the sweet nature of Christmas. He does not want the health service to deal with people only after they have contracted an illness, but to try to prevent them from contracting illnesses. He urged Members to take the type 2 diabetes test. I ran the London marathon this year for something that affects many menthe men's cancers, from which many still die, in particular prostate cancer. It is important that all men aged over 50 take the proper tests.
	My right hon. Friend also spoke about mobile phone masts. When I worked at the BBC, we found that that issue was nothing by comparison with those related to television masts, yet we rarely hear complaints about them.
	The right hon. Member for Bracknell is no longer in the Chamber, but he made his apologies earlier. He spoke about the hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green), and raised the issue of whether there should be a reference to the Standards and Privileges Committee. As I am sure he knows, that is a matter solely for the Speaker so I do not want to intrude.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Shona McIsaac) said that trawler men would be getting compensation. We are tidying up that issue for the relatively small number of people who have received no compensation and I am glad that Ministers in the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform have been able to make progress on that. Then my hon. Friend started talking rubbishthe confusion over rubbish collection in the constituency next door to hers.
	The hon. Member for Tiverton and Honitonor Dame Edith, as we now know herspoke about the spatial plan. She was most distrustful of regional development bodies[Hon. Members: Hear, hear.] All right. All I can say to the hon. Lady and to all Members who just said, Hear, hear is that I look forward to their applications to sit on regional Select Committees. Even if they voted against them, we should be absolutely delighted to see them on those Committees so that they can bring a degree of accountability to regional development bodies.
	I heard what the hon. Lady said about the Gas Act 1986 and I shall make sure that she has an answer. There was another issue, which I have forgotten, but I shall seek an answer for her about that too.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, North (Dr. Gibson) made an important speech, I thinkalthough obviously I disagreed with him somewhat about renationalising the railways. He made an important point about social and human investment [ Interruption. ] Oh, he is not in the ChamberI shall not talk about that point at length then.
	I am afraid that the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson) talked a whole load of rubbish about tax credits. My experience is that one of the things that has rescued more people from poverty in some of the poorest families in the poorest communities in my constituency is the system of tax credits, which has also made it possible for many families to get into work. Yes, there have been difficult moments, when sometimes the scheme has not been as generous as it might be, but the hon. Lady talked down the scheme in an unfortunate way.
	The hon. Lady said something sensible about Free our Bills, however. We want to ensure that the changes happen so that our presentation of legislation in the House is easier for Members to understand, in particular online so that they can research properly before they go into Committee. The changes will ensure, too, that all members of the public have a clearer insight into what we do in this place. That is why I am working very closely with the House authorities to ensure that we publish online in a way that is easier for the public.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) made a very important speech about the abuse of the elderly. In particular, he told us some horrific tales of problems with Southern Cross in his constituency. I will ensure that the meeting that he was seeking happens and that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health replies.
	The hon. Member for Uxbridge, from the shop workers' union, USDAWactually, I do not know whether he is unionisedpaid a tribute to shop workers. He was right to point out that we often talk about the armed forces, the police, the security services and people in the health service and so on working through Christmas, but my first job was in a rather Are You Being Served? store in Cheltenham [ Interruption. ] I know where hon. Members are going with that, so I shall say no more about it. He also said that he was quite prepared, in support of my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington, to stand in front of a bulldozer, and I suspect that he would win. We all pass on our regards to his mother and hope that she is getting better.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, East (Kerry McCarthy) made a very important speech about welfare reform and pointed out that Karen Matthews is not typical. Labour Members believe it is absolutely vital in the poorest communities in this country that we have a welfare system that does not keep people in poverty, but gives them opportunities in life, and that does not keep them on benefits, but gives them an opportunity to work. That is why, particularly in single-parent families, the opportunity to work is a really important thing that we need to advance as a socialist cause.
	The hon. Member for Cotswold (Mr. Clifton-Brown) spoke of pensioners and how many of them do not claim all their benefitshe has moved seats, which is unfairand he makes a very good point. It is incumbent on us to ensure that we do better at that. However, he also urged the House to drink Burgundy, which seemed a rather unpatriotic thing for us all to do at Christmas. There are perfectly good English wines and, indeed, some wonderful Welsh winessuch as Cariadso I hope that he will desist from doing so.
	The hon. Member for Southend, West (Mr. Amess) said that he did not want me to reply to any of the issues that he raised, so I am not going to.
	The hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mark Williams) raised the issue of HMRC jobs in Wales. He makes a fair point, which I will pass on to Ministers, and I hope that they will have an opportunity to reply to him.
	The hon. Member for Croydon, Central (Mr. Pelling)who has moved as well, and with whom I was at university, incidentallycalled for another platform. I suspect that that is unlikely to happen in Croydon, but I will pass on his message to the Secretary of State for Transport.
	The hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr. Jackson) referred tellingly to the middle east, and I wholeheartedly agree with the points that he made. It is interesting that this year, for the first time, many more pilgrims or tourists will be able to go to Bethlehem. It would be nice to see a Holy Land that could be genuinely visited by anyone.
	The hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr. Bacon) made a speech at a phenomenal paceit sounded a little as though it was being read into the recordbut he did so very ably, and I am not entirely sure what it was about.
	The hon. Member for Glasgow, East (John Mason) talked about proportional representation, and Herr Flickmy right hon. Friend the Member for Warleyhas told me that I am not to agree with him. The hon. Member for Chesterfield (Paul Holmes) referred in similar tones to what his leader said earlier today on Iraq. I disagree with him, and I hope he will understand that hon. Members can honourably disagree with one another.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Falkirk (Mr. Joyce) made a very important speech about the Congo. Lord Malloch-Brown has been engaged very vigorously in that issue from the moment that we could act on it.
	I should like to pay some tributes: first, to the staff of the Housethe Clerks, the Doorkeepers and, in particular, to Gladys in the Tea Room and to all the cleaners. I thank my private office and constituency officethis always sounds a little like the Oscar awardsbut, probably on behalf of all hon. Members, I thank our spouses and partners, because they often have to put up with an awful lot of rubbish from us.
	I think that what we have learned today is:
	No man is an Island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me.
	That is why the House today rightly expressed its concern for the vulnerable, the elderly, children, the homeless, the lonely, people in Zimbabwe, the people of the Congo, the unemployed and people in the middle east. We should always go further, and we should seek to abolish child poverty so that every child has an opportunity in lifethe opportunities that we have.
	 Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 9(3)).

PETITION
	  
	Immigration and Citizenship

David Amess: I have the honour to present a petition on behalf of 100 families concerning their views on the Green Paper The Path to Citizenship: Next Steps in Reforming the Immigration System. It states:
	The Humble Petition of the Malayalee community of Southend-on-Sea, Essex,
	Sheweth: that the proposal in the Home Office's Green Paper 'The Path to Citizenship' to increase the minimum period of temporary residency on the path to permanent settlement from five years to as much as ten years would not be fair to immigrants already in the United Kingdom who had anticipated they could permanently settle after only five years, and would result in one of the longest delays in access to citizenship in the European Union.
	Wherefore your Petitioners pray that your Honourable House do urge the Secretary of State for the Home Department to allow those already in the United Kingdom to keep their entitlement to settle as per the existing rules.
	And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray, c.
	[P000303]

SRI LANKA

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn. (Ian Lucas.)

Andrew Pelling: Mr. Deputy Speaker, I am grateful to you for selecting this subjecta matter of great importfor debate. It is the first debate of the Session on the important issues facing Sri Lanka. I am also grateful to the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the hon. Member for Harlow (Bill Rammell), for attending today, at the end of this parliamentary term. Our last debate on the subject was in Westminster Hall, where the right hon. Member for Enfield, North (Joan Ryan) spoke about the issues of concern.
	I am grateful to the very large number of Members who are present this evening. It is not normal for the House to be so full at this time, it being so close to Christmas. I am also grateful to the 32 Members who signed early-day motion 58 on this important subject. I know that there are Members who wished to be here but have clashes, particularly the hon. Members for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) and for Orpington (Mr. Horam). I regard myself as being here to facilitate matters for all those who wish to be involved in the debate; I shall be happy to give way to Members liberally.
	Many of us have attended protests on the outside, in Parliament square. Some of us spoke to some of the 25,000 people who attended the Remembrance day event at ExCeL. It is important that we recognise the difficult task that Her Majesty's Government have in trying to promote peace and harmony on the troubled isle of Sri Lanka, but we urge the Government to redouble their efforts to ensure that good work is done there.

Andrew Love: rose

Andrew Dismore: rose

Andrew Pelling: I am pleased to give way.

Andrew Love: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we need not just a United Kingdom effort, but an international effort that brings together India, which has an important role to play, the United Kingdom, for obvious historical reasons, the United States and the UN? Only by that sort of concerted action will we get movement.

Andrew Pelling: I am grateful for that intervention. I have a number of questions to pose to the Minister at the end of my speech, and will give way less at the very end. The hon. Gentleman makes an important point.

Jeremy Corbyn: rose

Andrew Dismore: rose

Andrew Pelling: I give way to the hon. Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn).

Jeremy Corbyn: I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way; he is being very generous. This is an important issue. Does he agree that a crucial part of the process must be a permanent UN human rights monitoring mission, based on the island, that can travel freely without let or hindrance, take up any causes that it wishes, and monitor any process or political agreement that takes place?

Andrew Pelling: That is an important and fundamental point, particularly given how the Norwegians and our own representatives have been treated by the authorities in Sri Lanka.

Lee Scott: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that one of the most important issues is that all roads should be opened and that food should be allowed through to vulnerable people? What does anyone want but a roof over their head, safety and the opportunity to live their life in peace and harmony? Does he agree, and should we work towards that?

Andrew Pelling: The hon. Gentleman makes a good point, which highlights some of the problems to do with the road to Jaffna and how many people have been living in starvationor living outside, having been turned into refugees.

Andrew Dismore: rose

Paul Burstow: rose

Andrew Pelling: I am happy to give way to the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Burstow).

Paul Burstow: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for introducing this important debate. Does he agree that we also need more independent and genuine news coverage that genuinely exposes what is going on in Sri Lanka? All too often, we do not get such coverage. Does he agree that that issue is important as well?

Andrew Pelling: That is right. Obviously, in conflicts information is sometimes used as a weapon. I have been impressed by what I have seen of the Defence Watch provision, which tries to give some balanced consideration.

Susan Kramer: rose

Andrew Dismore: rose

Andrew Pelling: I give way to the hon. Lady.

Susan Kramer: I thank the hon. Gentleman, who is being very generous with his time. With my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey), I met 400 Tamil people from our community. They presented evidence from relatives of what was happening in Vanni province. There is an immediate crisis and a need not only for a long-term solution, but an immediate oneparticularly for those deprived of even the most basic medical supplies and of support from United Nations agencies.

Andrew Pelling: I appreciate that intervention, which leads me to say that many of us Members of Parliament meet so many constituents whose relatives have sometimes been abducted or have disappeared. We all feel that keenly as Members of Parliament.

Andrew Dismore: rose

Andrew Pelling: I give way to the hon. Gentleman; I am so sorry not to have done so before.

Andrew Dismore: I thank the hon. Gentleman. He may not be aware that this afternoon there was an extensive debate on the Foreign Affairs Committee report on human rights, and human rights in Sri Lanka featured greatly in that. Sri Lanka has one of the worst records on press freedom. That is one of our problems in trying to discuss Sri Lanka; it is difficult to get proper information about the abuses of human rights there.

Andrew Pelling: I am grateful that the hon. Gentleman has attended this debate, given that that other debate finished only at half-past 5. It is important to highlight that the issue was given important consideration by the House; it was high up on the agenda in that other debate in Westminster Hall. The hon. Gentleman is exactly right: often there is a great deal of intimidation of journalists in Sri Lanka.
	More importantly, the debate becomes debased by the fact that anyone who dares give any consideration to the prospects of genocide in Sri Lanka is described as a terrorist. Hon. Members will know that I have myself been decried as having fallen into the hands of terrorists for even daring to raise that issue.

Keith Vaz: I deplore the attacks made on the hon. Gentleman and other hon. Members just because they raised that matter in the House. Is there not now a case for considering the proscription issue and doing what has happened with the People's Mujahedeen: raising partially the ban in this country, not to stop condemnation of terrorismwe all condemn terrorismbut for the British Tamil citizens who wish to raise humanitarian and social concerns? They face a lot of harassment. The hon. Gentleman mentioned the ExCeL centre; there were 12 counter-terrorism police at that centre simply because the ban exists. Is there not a case for partially raising the ban?

Andrew Pelling: It is a great privilege to give way to the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, who knows these issues so well. We do condemn terrorism and we recognise that the conflict in Sri Lanka is one of evil, in which the antagonism on both sides has led to appalling atrocities. However, it is wrong for the Sri Lankan Government to think it appropriate to wage war on their own people. We must be sensitive to the issues raised by the right hon. Gentleman because it is important that we make enough exception for there to be humanitarian and political activity. I guess that at the end of this debate we will come to the view that it is right to support Her Majesty's Government's approach and that a political dialogue should take place, rather than a continuation of the waging of war. We must also be cautious about the role that the high commission plays here in London in terms of forcing some banks to close accounts that might be being properly used for humanitarian efforts.

Simon Hughes: The hon. Gentleman has touched on many of the issues that concern us all, and many people who are tarred with the allegation that they are somehow supporting terrorists because they support their constituents and the wider community who want to speak out on issues of huge concern to them. Given the urgency of the current issues in Sri Lanka and the long-term problem that has not been resolved, does the hon. Gentleman agree that one of the things that the British Government might consider doing is seeking to persuade the Commonwealth, as well as the UN and other countries outside the European Union and the United States that have not taken a view on proscription, to come together early in the new year to seek an initiative with the Government of Sri Lanka, whatever happens militarily between now and then? They might say that the military conclusion will be sufficient, but clearly the issues will not change even if progress in that regard is made by the Government.

Andrew Pelling: That is the intervention that I would have expected from the hon. Gentleman, because it proposes practical ways for Her Majesty's Government to show leadership on this issue in partnership with others. We look forward to what the Minister says about how that response might be made.
	I will make one brief local comment and then pose some questions to the Minister before concluding. I am very proud that in Croydon members of the Tamil and Sinhalese communities came together in prayer in very large numbers1,500 peopleto pray for peace. That is the constructive approach that we would like to see in Sri Lanka itself. I would like to give credit to an associate of mine, Patrick Ratnaraja, who has lobbied effectively with Conservative Members of Parliament to raise concerns about this issue.
	I do not know how many of these questions for the Minister I will be able to get through; I certainly know that it will be impossible for him to answer them all in the 15 minutes that he has allocated to him. What work can be done by Her Majesty's Government to help non-governmental organisations to re-establish themselves in Tamil majority areas? What is the current policy on dialogue with Tamil groups in the UK and in Sri Lanka? Following on from the interventions that we have heard, which country does he think should take the lead in promoting dialogue with Sri Lanka? Is less attention perhaps being paid to this very important issue of the genocide and evil war that is taking place because of the distractions of the middle east?

John McDonnell: On the question of which country could take the lead, an ideal opportunity is coming up in April when we host the G20 talks. Every other peace initiative that has worked, from Northern Ireland right across the world, has engaged with America. With Barack Obama coming to this country, does the hon. Gentleman think it worth while for our Government to liaise with Barack Obama before he gets into power to say that this is an item that we could discuss at the G20, where there will be a host of nations that can assist us in this peace campaign?

Andrew Pelling: That is a good point to make. We often realise with American foreign policy that it is not only about ensuring that the right thing is done, but about strategic interests. We must remember that Trincomalee is a very important strategic harbour that we should be concerned about. Bearing in mind the Chinese interests that are now being promoted in Sri Lanka, partly because of the weakness of that country owing to the civil war, we need to be concerned about strategic American and British interests as well. What dialogue is taking place with China in the context of its growing interests in the country? How much of the money provided by the British public, and by the British taxpayer for tsunami relief, does the Minister think has been properly spent? Are export licences being properly managed to combat the export of arms that might be redirected for the killing of innocent people? How is the distribution of Department for International Development humanitarian funds going?
	I have three more questions to go; I know that I would be optimistic if I thought that even three could be answered in the 15 minutes that are available. How are matters progressing with our political and development section in Colombo; what are we doing to raise our concerns at the UN, as so many colleagues have suggested we should; and are the authorities treating our diplomats fairly and giving them reasonable discretion to be able to travel within the country? I have only one question to ask the Sri Lankan Government: why cannot they stop waging war on their own people?

Bill Rammell: I genuinely congratulate the hon. Member for Croydon, Central (Mr. Pelling) on securing the Adjournment debate on an important issue. As several hon. Members have done, I deplore the attacks on him and other hon. Members for simply raising genuine human rights concerns in the House.
	With great international concern about the humanitarian and human rights situation in the north of Sri Lanka, it is timely to hold a debate on that country. Like many people in Britain, the Government are deeply concerned about the worsening conflict between the Government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, and its impact on the welfare and human rights of Sri Lankan citizens.
	The lack of access by non-governmental organisations and the media to the conflict zone makes an objective assessment of the conflict impossible, to put it bluntly. Many alarming reports have emerged, speculating about the extent to which both parties' activities conform with international humanitarian law. Those reports need a sober and measured analysis based on the evidence available, and I will try to provide that.
	Concern for civilians in Sri Lanka and the primary responsibility of the Government of Sri Lanka to protect them means that the LTTE's role in the conflict is sometimes overlooked. It is important not to forget that the LTTE is a ruthless terrorist organisation, which is responsible for serious human rights abuses against civilians throughout Sri Lanka.
	The LTTE has no democratic mandate to represent the Tamil population. It is reported to recruit civilians, including children, into its ranks forcibly, to extort food and money from an already impoverished people, to abduct and kill Tamil civilians who disagree with its views or methods and to break all norms of international humanitarian law by preventing civilians from leaving conflict areas, effectively holding them as a human shield. The LTTE has conducted a terrorist campaign across the whole of Sri Lanka for nearly three decades, deliberately targeting thousands of individual civilians, as well as assassinating Government figures.
	The UK condemns those activities and recognises the Government of Sri Lanka's democratic right to fight terrorism. But

Keith Vaz: rose

Bill Rammell: I give way.

Keith Vaz: Perhaps the Minister should continue with the but.

Bill Rammell: I tried to get the but in quickly because I anticipated an intervention from my right hon. Friend.
	But if the Government of Sri Lanka are to be successful in the fight, they ultimately need to address the causes of terrorism, which are at the heart of the problem.

Keith Vaz: My hon. Friend is right to condemn terrorism, but is he not alarmed at the Sri Lankan Government's deploying cluster bombsbombing their own people, as the hon. Member for Croydon, Central (Mr. Pelling) has said? If my hon. Friend deplores the attacks on hon. Members, will he call the Sri Lankan high commissioner to his office tomorrow, and ask him to stop attacking hon. Members who raise important humanitarian issues in Parliament?

Bill Rammell: As I have outlined, there are genuine concerns. I have already made clear my view that there should not be attacks on hon. Members who raise legitimate concerns. We have put forward that view forcefully, and we will continue to do so.
	However, I also believe that we need a political solutionthat was the but that I wanted to express.

Keith Vaz: What about cluster bombs?

Bill Rammell: I shall deal with that shortly.
	The conflict between the Government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE has gone on for more than 25 years, and it has claimed the lives of at least 70,000 people in Sri Lanka. We recognise that the causes of the conflict, and the legitimate concerns of all communities in Sri Lanka, need to be addressed. However, terrorism is not the way to achieve that. The LTTE claims to be the sole legitimate voice of the Tamil people and is alleged to have killed Tamil politicians with different political views from its own. We must never allow a proscribed organisation to be the only voice of the people.
	There needs to be a full debate among all communitiesTamil, Muslim and Sinhalesefree from intimidation, on what an acceptable political settlement to the conflict might resemble. We have called on the LTTE to renounce terrorist methods and demonstrate genuine commitment to democratic principles. I hope that the recent reduction of attacks on civilian targets in the south of Sri Lanka suggests movement in that direction.
	The Government of Sri Lanka also have real responsibilities. They need to show that they are serious about reaching a political solution to the conflict, and to do much more to reach out to the different communities in Sri Lanka. We are supporting initiatives to get political parties together around the same table and to promote grass-roots dialogue between the different ethnic communities. An important part of a political solution will be to ensure that proper structures and institutions are in place to protect the rights of all Sri Lankans, and to bring an end to the culture of impunity that allows human rights abuses to occur across the island.

Lee Scott: In the past few years, Iraq has put on trial its leader, Saddam Hussein, who bombed and killed his own people. Exactly the same thing is being done by the Sri Lankan Government now.

Bill Rammell: Genuine concerns are being aired across the Chamber this evening, and we need them to be addressed, particularly in the context of a political solution. I was about to make the point that the Government of Sri Lanka's current approach is to defeat the LTTE militarily before developing a political solution. That does nothing to win the hearts and minds of conflict-affected civilians in the north, and it will not resolve the underlying conflict.

Susan Kramer: I wonder whether the Minister understands how distressing it is for our Tamil constituents not to hear an outright condemnation of the Sinhalese Government's use of strategies such as cluster bombing towards their civilians. Such language would have been used in the context of Darfur and elsewhere, yet it seems, selectively, not to be being used in this context.

Bill Rammell: I do not think that that is the case. There are real concerns about the strategy and the tactics that the Government of Sri Lanka are pursuing. I have made that clear this evening and, in all the contacts that my noble Friend Lord Malloch-Brown has with the Sri Lankan Government, those views are put forward very forcefully. We continue to argue that achieving a political solution now would be fundamentally in the Sri Lankan Government's interests. It would undermine the LTTE by demonstrating that they are not the sole representatives of the Tamil people, and it would diminish their support in Sri Lanka and overseas. We are strongly encouraging the Sri Lankan Government to initiate an inclusive political process to address the fundamental causes of the conflict.

Simon Hughes: The Government's strategy has always been very helpful on these issues. Can somebody try to get through to the Sri Lankan Government that there is no shame in involving other countries in trying to resolve these issues? We used Americans to help to resolve the issues in Northern Ireland. The Sri Lankan Government do not appear to understand that other people can help by bringing in their experience, and that, without them, there will probably be no internationally acceptable solution.

Bill Rammell: The hon. Gentleman has anticipated my next two points. I was going to say that we are working with other international partners such as the co-chairsthe European Union, the United States, Japan and Norwayand India to encourage a political solution. The UK welcomes all initiatives, domestic or international, that can contribute towards a sustainable political framework for a just settlement of the long-standing conflict in Sri Lanka that will satisfy the legitimate aspirations of all communities.
	Earlier this year, we invited the Sri Lankan all-party representative committee to visit the UK to examine the political process that was set up in Northern Ireland following the Good Friday agreement. The recent devolution proposals put forward by the APRC represent a positive step, but a more concerted effort is needed from the Government to involve all the major political parties in the APRC process and to demonstrate their political will to implement their proposals. For Sri Lanka to find a way forward, there needs to be a concerted effort from all communities to come together and agree a political package to resolve the underlying issues.
	To pick up on the point made earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn), we support the call by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees for an expanded UN monitoring mandate in Sri Lanka. I believe that that could be a constructive contribution.
	The humanitarian situation in Sri Lanka is of enormous concern. The increase in fighting and the progress of the Sri Lankan army in the north have created a large increase in the number of internally displaced persons. The latest estimates are that there are more than 230,000 IDPs, and many families have been repeatedly displaced during the past year. Each successive displacement leaves a household more impoverished and increasingly reliant on humanitarian assistance, and they leave the political solution that we are striving for much further away. Accurate figures have been difficult to get hold of since September when the Government instructed all NGOs and international NGOs to relocate away from the conflict zone.

Andrew Love: rose

Bill Rammell: I will give way for the very last time.

Andrew Love: I am grateful. It is, of course, a matter of most urgent concern that no one is able to get into the north of the island to find out what is actually going on. That is particularly reprehensible in that that is where aid organisations are based to help displaced people, and they are not being allowed to do their job. What efforts and pressure are the Government applying to get the Government of Sri Lanka to relent on that issue?

Bill Rammell: I very much agree with the strong point that my hon. Friend raises. We are lobbying at all levels to allow international NGOs full access to the affected areas, and we are pressing the Sri Lankan Government to permit a full, independent UN-led needs assessment mission to visit the affected areas and allow the UN to take appropriate humanitarian action. The issue has been raised at the highest level.
	When my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister met President Rajapakse in New York in September, he urged the Government to ensure that regular food convoys reach those in need. However, these have been delays and inadequate supplies are reaching those in need. We therefore continue to urge the Government to ensure that access is improved to enable sufficient food to be delivered and that essential non-food items such as shelter and medicines are also delivered in the quantities needed to improve the critical human rights situation.
	There have also been allegations of genocide or the indiscriminate bombing of civilians in the Vanni by the Sri Lankan Government. Our high commission in Colombo has discussed these allegations with NGOs, international organisations and the diplomatic community in Colombo. We should not lose sight of the fact that the LTTE also has a role to play. Most of the IDPs are caught in areas still held by the LTTE. In a joint statement on 26 September, my noble Friend Lord Malloch-Brown and the then Under-Secretary of State for International Development, my hon. Friend the Member for Dewsbury (Mr. Malik), called on both parties to respect their international obligations under international humanitarian law to protect civilians affected by the conflict and to enable free access for humanitarian agencies and the free movement of civilians.
	I have already mentioned that Sri Lanka faces a substantial terrorist threat, but respect for human rights is crucial to counter terrorism effectively. The human rights situation in Sri Lanka is of enormous concern. Disappearances and killings of civilians continue; there are reports of widespread intimidation of the media; child soldiers continue to be used by paramilitary groups; and a culture of ethnic discrimination persists. Prosecutions for such abuses are rare, which is enormously to be regretted.
	Human rights groups have alleged Government involvement in human rights abuses as well. Central to the allegations of Government collusion in human rights abuses is the weakness of the rule of law and the failure to investigate and prosecute those thought to be responsible for the worst abuses. That feeds a culture of impunity, which is one of the real obstacles to peace in Sri Lanka. There has, for example, still been no arrest of anyone for the murder of 17 Action Contre La Faim aid workers in 2006.
	The Government of Sri Lanka are also linked to human rights abuses through the actions of Government-aligned paramilitaries, including the Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal, which broke away from the LTTE in 2006. The TMVP's human rights abuses, including child recruitment, mirror those of the LTTE. In our contacts with the Government and TMVP politicians, we have regularly raised critical human rights issues, such as the need to release child soldiers and the need for the TMVP to disarm. There has been recent progress on both those issues and our lobbying has contributed to an agreement being made in early December between the TMVP, UNICEF and the Government to work towards the release of all TMVP child soldiers within three months. Following our lobbying, the TMVP recently made a public commitment to disarm as soon as the threat from the LTTE was removed. I welcome those positive signs of the TMVP's commitment to democracy but, bluntly, much more remains to be done. We will continue to urge the Government and paramilitaries to take further steps.
	Although the LTTE and paramilitary groups share responsibility for the poor human right situation, the Government of Sri Lanka have primary responsibility for ensuring the human rights of its citizens. When my noble Friend Lord Malloch-Brown visited the country in July, he encouraged the Government to do more to protect the human rights of those affected by the conflict. Our high commission in Colombo regularly repeats that message at the highest levels.
	It is understandable that the Tamil community in this country are concerned about the plight of Tamils in Sri Lanka, and we have heard that point made very forcefully by hon. Members this evening. I want to assure them that we attach importance to listening to all views from the Sri Lankan diaspora, and I encourage all members of the community who wish to offer humanitarian support to Tamils to channel it through the humanitarian agencies as the most effective way to make a contribution.
	I am conscious that members of the Tamil community in the UK are concerned about proscription of the LTTEan issue raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz). I have already outlined the LTTE's record as a terrorist organisation and I have to say that until it renounces terrorist activities in word and deed, there is little prospect of the proscription being lifted.
	I hope that it is clear that the Government share the concerns expressed this evening. We are doing everything possible to ease the humanitarian situation and to push for a political solution. I congratulate the hon. Member for Croydon, Central again on raising these crucial issues in this evening's debate.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Before we rise for Christmas, may I say how pleasant it is to hear so many kind words and good wishes expressed in the Chamber? In turn, may I wish every single Member of Parliament, every single member of staff and all their families a very merry Christmas and a happy and peaceful new year.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 House adjourned.